Observe
Short observations from the current: AI devtools, software practice, engineering judgment, and attention. Less polished than essays; more durable than posts.
AI devtools
As AI agents get better, the senior engineer's leverage moves toward framing the work, supplying context, sequencing tasks, and reviewing the result. Coding is not disappearing; it is being surrounded by higher-level direction work.
Tooling
The interesting signal is not one editor winning forever. It is that the development environment is becoming a collaboration surface for agents. If mindshare moves, watch where the workflow moves with it.
Practice
AI compresses execution time. It does not automatically improve taste, product judgment, user empathy, or attention. The danger is mistaking velocity for clarity.
Engineering judgment
When code generation becomes cheap, the scarce layer becomes deciding what should exist, what should be deleted, and what level of quality is acceptable. Judgment becomes the main interface.
Attention
Attention is not decorative wellness language. It is the capacity to hold a system in mind, notice what matters, and resist the easy distraction. Better tools should protect it, not consume it.