How our leadership "saved" the company by banning the tools that worked

Hello, Earth. I'm transmitting from planet Astra.

I'd like to share a small problem with you. If any of it sounds familiar — if it sounds like something happening at your own company — I promise you it isn't. This happened on Astra. Any resemblance is a coincidence of the cosmos.

Chapter One: The Visionary

Once upon a time, on Astra, there was a software house of about twenty people. It had a leader with a wide and far-seeing vision. He saw that AI was becoming useful across our planet, and he decided that everyone should use it.

And in the beginning, it was good. We used AI as a buddy. We designed the architecture ourselves, we made the structural decisions ourselves, and we let the AI help with the parts where a second pair of hands is genuinely faster. It worked. Nobody complained. This chapter is short, because happy chapters usually are.