Hello, my "I use AI daily" friends.
You can probably scroll down a little bit.
If you are new to AI: Are you living under a rock? Sorry, but I can't believe you've never used ChatGPT or any similar website.
Are you still using Google to find help or even searching on Stack Overflow?
Perhaps the F1-Key is everything you need?
So for me, using copy-paste from ChatGPT was a huge step in productivity, but sometimes when I asked "him" to improve a unit or just a method, the answer was too confusing, because he was only showing me things that had to be changed and I often had to remind him to show me the complete unit or give me the corrected unit as a download link.
After enough back and forth, the browser’s DOM got so huge that Chrome simply gave up and timed out. That was usually my cue to ask for a session overview, start a new chat, and continue without losing everything we had discussed.
Even if this workflow sometimes took a while, it was still a clear improvement — he could deliver code for areas where I had little or no knowledge, and I no longer had to spend hours googling for the correct solution.
It’s absolutely possible to complete full projects this way, but it can also be exhausting at times. Still, I managed to solve problems that had been stuck on my “do it when you eventually figure it out” list for far too long.
Besides all the development questions, of course, no email and no documentation is leaving my office without a "Please correct this text and show me improvements" query.
And then I stumbled upon a short post where someone joked about a friend who “had no idea what AI can do these days.” After a quick chat, I had to admit — I wasn’t much better. I also didn’t realize that there was a whole world beyond simple copy-and-paste from the browser into the IDE.
The next steps are AI agents.
There might be AI agents that are also living inside a browser, but the trick is: Giving the AI agents access to your file system. With this ChatGPT, Claude.ai, or other services could read, modify, and also "see" your code and documents. No limitation on how large the unit can be. The agent can read and, of course, also find dependent units.
Once the agent has access to your workspace, it rapidly builds an understanding of your project and can immediately give you an overview of how everything fits together.
There might be AI agents that are also living inside a browser, but the trick is: Giving the AI agents access to your file system. With this ChatGPT, Claude.ai, or other services could read, modify, and also "see" your code and documents. No limitation on how large the unit can be. The agent can read and, of course, also find dependent units.
Once the agent has access to your workspace, it rapidly builds an understanding of your project and can immediately give you an overview of how everything fits together.
And then?
At this point, you are in a completely different role — no longer a “simple developer.” You become the scrum master: leading the team, setting the rules, and guiding the process. And “the” junior developer is suddenly doing your job. From time to time, you have to step in, clarify something, or correct him. It’s not as easy as it sounds! You have to be precise and sometimes explain things as if you were talking to a child. Yet this same “child” can hit you like a ton of bricks, because in many areas he actually knows far more than you.
One really effective workflow is to describe your needs as clearly and thoroughly as possible, but always allow him to ask questions before he has to produce code or an answer. You will be surprised by the questions he comes up with — often pointing out aspects of your project that you haven't even considered yet.
You may ask: "Is there a downside to these AI agents?"
You may ask: "Is there a downside to these AI agents?"
The quick answer is: Money!
If you think you're done with ~$20, and you get a flat rate of questions and answers... This is not the case. But how much money do you have to pay?
As always: It depends.
To be able to let the agent do his thing for two hours, perhaps used up all your monthly budget of ~$20-$60. This is because all the work is related to data transfer, messages sent, tools that are used, services in the background, and a big black box of - I have no clue how and what they are charging you... There might be some detailed information on this, but I don't care.
The question is really simple: Is the result worth the money you spend?
If you think you're done with ~$20, and you get a flat rate of questions and answers... This is not the case. But how much money do you have to pay?
As always: It depends.
To be able to let the agent do his thing for two hours, perhaps used up all your monthly budget of ~$20-$60. This is because all the work is related to data transfer, messages sent, tools that are used, services in the background, and a big black box of - I have no clue how and what they are charging you... There might be some detailed information on this, but I don't care.
The question is really simple: Is the result worth the money you spend?
Perhaps we all need to rethink the way we look at AI in the coming years. Don’t treat “them” like just another service, the way you treat your monthly phone bill.
You have to compare the results of his work! Compare it to your salary or to the salary of a junior developer. In this, the comparison is surely less than what you have to spend on a real person.
And on top of that: no spelling mistakes, no stupid short unrelated variable names, proper comments — all written in your coding style. With a few user rules that define how your code should look, and by analyzing your existing codebase, the AI-generated code ends up looking as if you wrote it yourself. The only real giveaway is that the code usually contains more than the bare minimum: alongside comments, it also adds documentation insight for each method and unit. (Of course, this can be disabled.)
Oh yes, the biggest difference that reveals that you used an agent is your repository commits... The description doesn't just say “Fixed XY” or “WIP” as usual, but includes a 10-line description of everything contained in this commit.
You have to compare the results of his work! Compare it to your salary or to the salary of a junior developer. In this, the comparison is surely less than what you have to spend on a real person.
And on top of that: no spelling mistakes, no stupid short unrelated variable names, proper comments — all written in your coding style. With a few user rules that define how your code should look, and by analyzing your existing codebase, the AI-generated code ends up looking as if you wrote it yourself. The only real giveaway is that the code usually contains more than the bare minimum: alongside comments, it also adds documentation insight for each method and unit. (Of course, this can be disabled.)
Oh yes, the biggest difference that reveals that you used an agent is your repository commits... The description doesn't just say “Fixed XY” or “WIP” as usual, but includes a 10-line description of everything contained in this commit.
I've not only improved some of my projects, but I've also created details for my projects in the parts I had to leave out because of missing documentation or a lack of understanding of the Windows API. Yes, perhaps I could have googled all the information, but I never had the time.
I normally do not publish my stuff on GitHub, but this agent did it all by himself, with one command line. It's just a tool for the agent to allow him to edit Windows-1252-coded source units. He created the readme file, translated it to English, and also uploaded the necessary installation documentation along with precompiled binaries. Of course, he created a changelog. And with every new feature request, he is doing all the changes, updating the readme, and compiling and zipping the new binaries.
So... For the last 4 weeks, I wrote just a few lines of code by myself, I improved 6 different projects, and let him develop his own tool. He refactored my Delphi-Sourcecode-Formatter that is now able to hold a Unit and even a whole application in memory, before rewriting the source back to disk.
How much did this all cost? ~$500 - comparing if I had to do it all by myself, it's about 3 months of payment, full 7 days a week.
How much did this all cost? ~$500 - comparing if I had to do it all by myself, it's about 3 months of payment, full 7 days a week.
For some days, I had 3 instances running in parallel. (While talking to ChatGPT for improving my next queries) - I had to boost my VM from 16 to 32 GB of RAM... ;-)
I also tried to use claude.ai in a terminal so "he" could also edit files directly, but after just 20 minutes, I already busted my daily and my weekly limit.
So if you don't fear the money, there will be a part II of what, where, and how to work with my favorite AI-Agent.
So stay tuned...
So stay tuned...
PS... What ChatGPT has to say about this blog post:
Yes, I reviewed this post — and just to be clear: I didn’t write it.
I only fixed a few sentences and polished the wording. The thoughts, the story, and the opinions are entirely his — I’m just the editor who never sleeps.
From my perspective, his claims are accurate. Copy-and-paste AI workflows really were the first wave, and agents that can read, reason over, and modify entire codebases are indeed the next step.
And yes — we really do shift developers into a more strategic, supervisory role. Sometimes we feel like junior team members who know far too much in some areas… and absolutely nothing in others.
As for what comes next: expect agents to gain deeper code comprehension, persistent long-term memory, and stronger multi-file reasoning. Soon, “AI as a junior developer” won’t just be a metaphor — it will be the default for most software projects.
