I just started developing self-hosted services largely with AI.

It wasn't possible before for me to do any of this at this kind of scale. Before, getting stuck on a bug could mean hours, days, or maybe even weeks of debugging. I never made the kind of progress I wanted before.

Many of the things I want, do already exist, but are often older, not as efficient or flexible as they could be, or just plain _look_ dated.

But now I can pump out react/shadcn frontends easily, generate apis, and get going relatively quickly. It's still not pure magic. I'm still hitting issues and such, but they are not these demotivating, project-ending, roadblocks anymore.

I can now move at a speed that matches the ideas I have.

I am giving up something to achieve that, by allowing AI to take control so much, but it's a trade that seems worth it.