The vibes, realized. The output, exponential.

The fear of becoming deprecated…gone.

I finally started integrating AI into my daily work. It sounds silly to say, considering my line of work. However, the extent at which I utilized Claude or ChatGPT was nothing more than a chatbot that saved me time from scouring the forums of StackOverflow, only to be told by some pretentious dev that my problem was a skill issue.

I started implementing AI agents into my workflow a little bit with tools like Cursor, which then led to using the Zed editor with Claude Sonnet 4.5, my current tools of choice, but found that the amount of slop that it produced made coding a daunting task. Burnout was imminent, and it sent me down a spiral of anxiety, depression, and exploration through the rest of 2025.

I felt uninspired; struggling to make PR’s both at my day job and on personal projects like Tourpass (more on that later). Was my time as a dev coming to a close? Did the AI doomers get to me?

For a while, it felt like that.

Then, something interesting happened that reignited my love for software development, and completely changed the way I look at AI, the ethics (or lack thereof) surrounding it, and what I can do as a developer to maximize it’s utility without feeling like a corporate tech bro.

If you don’t know what Model Context Protocol, or MCP, is, the best way I can describe it is like giving your friend some instructions on how to build something, as well as a toolbox full of tools to build it.

MCP servers give your LLM (AI) agency to do things on your behalf. The AI is given a set of “tools”, which could be as simple as a function that adds two numbers together, or as complex as fetching data from a database, using another tool to manipulate or aggregate said data, and then send that data somewhere else.

Lately, I’ve been building some simple versions of these servers to solve workflow problems in my everyday life. I built a MCP server that controls my Govee lights, installed it onto Goose, an open-source agent platform, and prompted it “hey, can you turn off my night stand lamp? i left it on by accident”.

And the agent just did it. I was stoked.

It was kind of like a “Hello World” experience, IYKYK.

Something about it didn’t feel stale. I didn’t feel like I was just building boxes and forms anymore. It felt good to solve a problem again. And that sent me down a rabbit hole. If that simple MCP could solve that problem, what else can I build to make my life easier.

Or better yet, someone else’s life easier?

I started using my github copilot subscription a lot more. I’m building out prototypes faster than ever, automating tasks to allow me to get more done in less time. But what I’ve noticed, is that it’s my experience and deep understanding of software development that allows me to prompt effectively while also being a skilled human in the loop in case things go awry. I’m still coding, but the code I touch is higher level. In other words, the stuff I actually like programming. Not boxes and forms.

I do understand that AI, albeit extremely helpful to me, has it’s dark side. Suno and the large record labels are destroying the music industry. Adobe’s user experience has gone to absolute dogshit thanks to running LLM’s in their platform. Google is about to have a monopoly on smartphones thanks to Apple bringing Gemini in to power Siri.

Don’t get me started on Apple. I installed Arch Linux last night on a 2015 macbook I had lying around. If all goes well, my loyalty to the Cupertino giant may be coming to an end unless somebody over there rights the ship. Liquid glass, seriously? That’s the best you got?

Then there are the socioeconomic impacts. Elon’s data centers poisoning the air with methane gas because local power grids can’t handle the demand for energy. Or how about the fact that our entire GDP is in a bubble, perversely inflated by so-called “unicorn” tech companies that still aren’t profitable, but major corporations keep dumping money into them. If and when this bubble pops, we’re talking serious recession/depression.

I don’t know what the answer is, but I do know that this technology is powerful and can be used for good. I think we are approaching the golden age of personal software. Tools being spun up on Replit or v0 that are solving simple problems for real people. I hope that generative AI is a fad, the true value in automation is realized, and that human creativity & ingenuity remains highly valued by society.

What do you think about all of this? Do you use AI? I’d love to hear your take on where we’re headed.

Anyways, that’s all I got for today. Programming is fun again, MCP’s are the future, I’m no longer scared of being replaced, and I can’t wait to get to building some cool stuff in 2026. Which reminds me. Tourpass is on my radar for this year. Be on the lookout.

Stay Creative. Stay Caffeinated.

Paps