A lot of software engineers are quietly miserable right now. They probably include your senior tech lead and your engineering manager.
The issue is the speed and shape of adoption: agentic tools like Claude Code and Codex are changing engineering output faster than engineering culture can absorb. The resulting explosion in output is leading to magnificent metrics but stoking a mania among the engineers on the front lines.
The symptoms are by now familiar. Bloated PRs, scope creep, and engineers relying on AI tools to answer basic questions about how their code works.
I was speaking to an experienced developer today and we half-jokingly discussed running an “AI fast.” A week of no AI use. No coding agents, no email summarization, no AI-enabled exploratory spirals.
Fasting is an ancient way of building physical and spiritual strength through abstinence and self-denial.
We are all committing the cardinal sin of token gluttony, and the results aren’t pretty. Like other forms of indulgence, it may lead to significant long-term health issues for our code bases and our organizations.
Maybe it’s time to consider what a healthier relationship with AI tooling might look like. Starting, perhaps, with a fast.
