I just keep pressing the lever on Cursor or Windsurf or Cline or whatever else tool is out there, asking it to format my thoughts into tangible apps that I can play with. I type a few words and bam!, the idea that has been sitting in my head for months and years has instantly formed its own GitHub repo—and it works. Until it doesn’t. Until it loops itself into a stupor, over and over again hitting its head against the wall. 

Now I have an abstract, black box AI who I’m sharing this wall with. And we pretend to understand each other, but one speaks in 1s and 0s and I am made of flesh and bones. I’m constantly reminding it of this and that, kind of like how my mother reminds me to put the dishes in the dishwasher. “Did you remember to look at that line of code? I’ve already told you about that, go check again!”

It’s all too familiar and yet, quite strange territory. A year ago, when I built my first app, my WA Transcript tool that has saved me so much time in listening to people’s voice notes, I was utterly blown away. I still am, it just has some frustrations built in to it. The more reliant I become on the tool, the more delirious I become in wanting it to be perfect, chasing my perfection to the high sky, waiting for the sun to melt me in sheer joy.

I also don’t understand all the sprawling files and how they work together. I just trust the AI gets it. I understand what libraries to use. I get how an API works. I have coded up several apps myself. But, now, this overhead thinking, I just copy+c and copy+v my problems and hope that the problem gets figured out. Eventually it does. And I can feel the cortisol levels drops again.

Until another brilliant feature or idea pops in to my mind. That unsatisfactory presence, the detail-oriented hunger for the perfect product that just works. That keeps delivering swimmingly. It’s fun. Then it’s not. Then it’s fun again. Then hours have passed by. And what was I supposed to do again?

Oh right, I should stop working on this plugin/app/game-changing-idea-that-changes-games. Alright Cursor, just push my code to my repo, write up a nice readme file, and I’m going to go to sleep. But I wish the AI would keep working in my sleep so that all my ideas were built beautifully in the morning.

What kind of crazy expectations am I creating with my computer? Just a year ago, it couldn’t do this. It couldn’t just create files and do all the things Daft Punk said was technologic. Now it’s rolling faster and I want more. Nervewracking. And breathtaking. My personal Shinkansen powered by a cloud somewhere (I have yet to be on any bullet trains, let’s not laugh about America’s train infra).

It’s false productivity that still has productivity in it, but I’m not any richer, despite all the crazy YouTubers out there selling AI gold out west. Nor is it helping me connect with humans, so that’s what my friend’s fireplace and late night Andy’s ice cream is for. It is satisfying, in a weird way, to see all my ideas come alive. I’m hooked on making my dreams come true. In fact, I can finally just ship it. Subhanallah.