AI March 2, 2026 ·7 min

AI pair programming, eighteen months in

What changed in my workflow, what didn't, and the practices that 10x'd the value of the tools I already had.

The shift

The interesting question is no longer “does AI help me code.” It is “which parts of my craft does it commoditize, and which parts does it amplify.”

Tools amplify taste. They commoditize plumbing. Plan your career accordingly.

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Module boundaries, build pipelines, and the lessons learned splitting one giant repo into something humans can actually navigate.

Five years of YAML archaeology condensed into a setup that finally feels boring — in a good way.

Yes you can. No you probably shouldn't — until you should. Here is the decision tree.