Claude: "This project will take 3 months." Me: "You have 3 hours."

With AI in the loop, the three hours are actually real now — you'll have something running. What doesn't compress is deciding what "done" means, catching the failure cases, and owning the thing six months later when it breaks. AI moved the cost from writing the code to knowing which code deserved to exist. So the honest answer isn't three months or three hours, it's: three hours for a version you can look at, and then a real conversation about what we're willing to live with.