The hardships of solo development in an AI paced world

The problem is not speed. The problem is appetite.

Solo development with AI feels powerful, but it also changes the shape of the difficulty. The old blocker was often capacity. Can I build this screen? Can I write the API? Can I test the thing? With good tools, the answer is more often yes.

That sounds great until every idea becomes plausible.

The hard part becomes scope creep. A small fix turns into a feature. A feature turns into a platform. A platform suggests a dashboard, a settings page, a replay system, a mobile view, and maybe a pricing model if I am not careful.

There is also decision fatigue. When an agent can produce three decent approaches in a minute, I still have to choose. I still have to decide what matters, what to cut, what to test, what to ship, and what to leave ugly for now.

That is why I keep adding friction to my own workflow. One repo per session. Capture and continue. Build reports. Kanban states. Local testing before pushing. Written handoffs. It can look slower from the outside, but it stops me waking up with twelve half-finished brilliant ideas and no clean branch.

AI has made me faster, but it has also made discipline more important. The craft is not just prompting. It is knowing when to stop.