I was about to head off on a long holiday. The bags were half-packed. The "Out of Office" was drafted. But I had one last ticket: "Auto-discover and generate a report on how our RDs are using AI this month."
I had developed agent skills that could ask Claude Code to do this for us. It sounded simple enough.
The Bug: Lazy Intelligence
We ran the agent this week, and the results were terrible. I realised that when we scaled the task scope but kept it to a single agent session, the agent started skipping details for the sake of efficiency—or maybe just laziness.
It decided not to look into the details as the skill instructed. Instead, it just skimmed.
The Loop (Late Evening)
It was late evening. Desperate to protect my upcoming holiday, I relentlessly tried to solve it. I told myself, "I’ve been wanting to try the Ralph-loop plugin anyway."
It didn’t work as I’d hoped. After midnight, I switched to the Ralph-loop shell script. Still not really helpful.
The Last Shot
The next day—the very last working day before my holiday—I prepared my proxy with the strategy for the worst-case scenario, just in case.
Then, I headed back for one last shot: Claude Code Skill + Subagents —something I hadn't tried before.
It was already past working hours, but I was driven by something I can't quite explain—I just needed to see if my solution could work. Late that evening (luckily not too late), it finally clicked. It worked exactly as I expected.
I was absolutely chuffed. I did it! Excited and relieved.
git push everything.
Laptop lid closed.
The "Magic" Trap
This has become the typical day (and night) in the company now.
Because we can automate anything, everyone expects us to automate everything.
The schedules are suddenly shorter. The effort is expected to be smaller. "Just ask the AI to do it," they say.
As developers, we naturally want to automate things to make our lives easier. We explore solutions. We try new tech like we’re playing video games without self-control. It is so easy to work until late and lose perspective.
We get excited about the good possibilities. But we also feel unsure about the terrible possibilities—when we lose control of the very things we built.
We are overwhelmed. At work, and at heart.
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