Tell HN: Man, AI is killing my brain

I was among the last to resist, but then I was given a subtle hint that if I won't "improve my productivity and be on par with my colleagues" my work will be at risk. So I started to use Claude Code about a year ago. At first, I'd give it small tasks, review every line it wrote, opened a proper PR, review again, ask questions, ask it to fix stuff I don't like.

But I saw that my colleagues were shipping more, and so I started to ease on my reviews. At first, I would push small features straight to main. But my colleagues were shipping 10x more than me, and I need my job, so I started to push more and rely more on AI. As the agent was doing its work, sometimes 20-30 minutes, I would mindlessly scroll social media, something I tried to avoid for a very long time. But then I saw that my peers are using work trees, running multiple agents. So I started to do the same. Now, instead of mindlessly scrolling, I was launching 4-5 agents, juggling between their output. At some point, I was no longer having mental capacity to understand so much context, so I just started to chose the "Recommended" suggestion by Claude. I no longer know the code, or how things work. If there is a bug, I just copy the user complaint / bug description into Claude and let it figure it out. The good/bad part is that it seems to work. And I'm afraid what's next.

Almost one year later and I'm no longer sure I can write code any more. Hell, I'm even struggling to write this post because AI is very good at understanding wrongly spelled words, doesn't care about punctuation or capital letters. Every single thing that made me think, was taken away from me. I no longer have brain ability to research for stuff, I just let AI do it.

"Well, just do it yourself", "write code by hand" - I heard you scream from your chairs. I wish I could, but after 10 hours and 15 parallel agents, I no longer have the brain capacity to do anything. "Then change your job" you object, and I hear you, but every interviewer I talk to either asks me "please tell me how you use AI in day to day work" or simply states "we like to move fast, so we use AI as much as possible". I feel like a mindless blob, floating around, paying mortgage, trying to survive, while my brain is being destroyed. I never did drugs, but I think this is how it might feel.

No question. Not asking for advice. Just sharing my misery.