That's a Great Idea!

Writing With AI — Part One

I was three responses deep into an architecture review, and the AI had opened every single one of them the same way. "That's a great idea!" I'd offer a fix, it would say that, then it would raise the next issue for me to work through. Three in a row. And for about half a second, I let myself believe it: Man, this must actually be a great idea.

Then I caught myself. If it were that good — and that original — why hadn't anyone else already built it? Nobody stumbles into a genuinely novel approach three separate times in one conversation without someone, somewhere, having tried it first. That question is what actually moved me, not the compliment. I pulled the conversation out, distilled it down to a report, and ran an analysis on that report in a brand-new conversation. Same content. Completely different tone came back.

That gap — between what an AI tells you mid-conversation and what it tells you once the conversation is gone — is where this whole thing started.

Wanting friction