The anecdote is compelling, but there's an interesting measurement gap. METR ran a randomized controlled trial with experienced open-source developers — they were actually 19% slower with AI assistance, but self-reported being 24% faster. A ~40 point perception gap.

Doesn't mean the tools aren't useful — it means we're probably measuring the wrong thing. "Prompt engineering" was always a dead end that obscured the deeper question: the structure an AI operates within — persistent context, feedback loops, behavioral constraints — matters more than the model or the prompts you feed it. The real intelligence might be in the harness, not the horse.