Ask HN: Anyone else struggling with AI and work?

The past year or so I've been working with coding agents and at first they just felt like a really really great tool. They'd allow me to do my work faster, and while obviously not perfect, they'd do a pretty good job.

When Opus 4.5 came out it seemed like something changed. I found myself reviewing less and less code. I wasn't writing any on my own either. And for the past several months it's really just been like that. I dictate to my machine a long prompt as to what feature I want, how I want it architected, and what success looks like and Codex just does it. And does it pretty damn well.

This has left me feeling a bit lost in my career because much of the challenge and flow that I would get from coding is gone. Thinking through intricate data flows, mapping them out in my brain, etc... is just gone. I don't do it anymore because there's just no need.

Many will say, "well stop using it so much" or "use it more like a tool and less like the E2E developer." Well...I can't really. I am just flat out not as good, fast, or complete as these latest agents. It would be disingenuous to my company, and my employer would probably question why my productivity is so much lower than my peers.

I think the main emotion i'm feeling right now is just extreme boredom. I don't think being remote is helping at all tbh.

On the surface it feels like it should be amazing. Most of my work is taken care of by agents. But in reality I feel kind of empty, disengaged and bored.

Does anyone else feel like this? Anything you've done to combat it? I have 3 young children so "doing hard stuff outside of work" is not really an option. I have considered working with my hands while prompting and testing code because that would at least make me feel engaged with _something_, but I don't think that will actually work in practice.