The problem nobody warns you about
I installed a new AI coding assistant last month. Within a week, my laptop fan was spinning constantly, my battery drained twice as fast, and I noticed weird spikes in network activity even when I wasn't actively using the tool.
That got me curious. What is this thing actually sending?
If you've ever wondered the same about an IDE extension, a CLI tool, or a "helpful" agent that magically integrates with your editor, this post is for you. I've been debugging this exact class of problem across three projects, and the toolkit is surprisingly approachable once you sit down with it.
Why you can't just "read the privacy policy"
