Within the past 2 months, as I've started to use AI more, I've had this trajectory:

  1. only using AI for small things, very impressed by it
  2. giving AI bigger tasks and figuring out how to use it well for those bigger tasks
  3. full-agentic mode where AI just does its thing and I review the code at the end
  4. realising that I still need to think through all the code and that AI is not the shortcut I was hoping it to be (e.g. where I can give it a high-level plan and be reasonably satisfied with the final code)
  5. going back to giving AI small tasks

I've found AI is very useful for research, proof-of-concepts and throwaway code of "this works, but is completely unacceptable in production". It's work I tend to do anyway before I start tackling the final solution.

Big-picture coding is in my hands, but AI is good at filling in the logic for functions and helping out with other small things.