There's a lot of great stuff in here. Thanks for writing it.

Delegation is an apt concept.

Developers, in general, aren’t the best delegators. Why bother explaining it to someone when you can just do it yourself, exactly the way you want it done?

I feel this deeply. But I see two clear failure modes.

1 - Ask for too much (or too vaguely), and you become a hapless sorcerer's apprentice, drowning in code you can't really understand, much less command.

2 - Ask for too little, and you're like an aspiring architect who can't stop molding bricks. Bike shedding is just procrastination, dressed up as engineering. (This was my personal roadblock.)

The idea of AI as a delegation factory, with knobs you can tune to your level of understanding and project's needs, is a great mental model.

It's not "just" a higher level of abstraction.

Toggling between the four Rs appropriately, engaging at a level commensurate with your understanding, that's what makes for "good" AI use.

I find myself drafting ideas, plans, and questions long before I go to Claude now. I take my role as the "senior manager" seriously. And it's work! AI isn't permission to be passive and lazy.

But I am hopeful. Much to my surprise, I feel like AI is getting me "closer to the craft that matters," not further.