What is left of my craft when I only orchestrate?

Recently I wanted to change some text on my website, actually just one word. I build the project with AI, check the work myself now and then, and also make changes in the IDE. This time the IDE was closed and the AI was open. Because it was easier, I used the AI to change the text. It was quick and painless. But I never asked myself whether the AI was the right tool here. I took what happened to be open, out of convenience.

In doing so, I did not decide which tool to use, the quick availability of the AI window did. I am happy to hand over text changes. But my habit does not distinguish between a single word and the things I want to be able to do, or don’t want to unlearn.

In another project I was looking for an error in the .htaccess. The server returned a 500, and the AI was sure the syntax was correct. We checked it for about 10 minutes - and in part I looked up directives in the docs myself. Then I asked: “Could it be that this directive is rejected by the host?” The result of that exchange: it was not the file. The host does not support the directive.

The AI knew the syntax. The question about the host came from me. At some point it dawned on me that the cause might not be the file but the environment it runs in. My question was a concrete guess about exactly this directive and the host.

That is my answer to the question in the title: I am happy to hand over the typing. What I want to keep is the direction of the question - is it in the code, in the configuration, in the environment, or somewhere else? The AI speeds up the search, but where to search is up to me - or not, when I take what is open out of convenience. That is my personal impression from these two cases.

This ties in with the first two logs. “Where could this break?” and “Where does this go?” are questions that address my domain, but also my intuition, which I have built up over many years as a developer. That intuition would wither if I did not actively keep asking the questions from this and the previous logs myself. Because what matters to me is that in the end I can stand behind what I sign off on, as an author, with a clear conscience.

The AI is welcome to write words. What matters to me is that I decide what I hand over and what I want to keep.

My exercise this week: for a problem I want to be able to solve myself, I write down one sentence before the prompt: “I suspect X because Y.” Then I ask myself: is it in the code, in the configuration, in the environment, or somewhere else? For everything else, the AI may just do it.

And you? Which skill did you hand over most recently - and did you decide that on purpose?