The turning point: developing with AI agents
I first paid US$20 a month for AI tools myself; when Claude Code arrived I moved to US$100 a month from 2025-07-09 and began developing with AI agents. Development work, commits and new projects all rose sharply afterwards. My own hands-on share of the time fell from about 80% to about 20% (own estimate).
How the human:AI split changed
- 2025-02Started working with AI8:2
- 2025-07Moved to Claude Code6:4
- 2025-09Claude Sonnet 4.55:5
- 2025-11Claude Opus 4.54:6
- 2026-02Claude Opus 4.63:7
- 2026-06Claude 5 generation2:8
MeAI Agent
Early on, steady output from agents took a lot of hand-written scaffolding: CLAUDE.md/AGENTS.md, rules under .claude, SKILL.md files and project indexes, plus my own loop and harness engineering. With each new Claude generation more of that became built in. My time moved to decisions on data control and flow, system architecture and maintainability, while agents handle implementation and execution.
Ratios are my estimate, stepped at Claude model releases. Each case’s logged hours are split by the period’s ratio (at 2:8, 100 h is 20 h mine and 80 h AI); hours before 2025-02-22 count as mine. From 2026 models also run overnight, outside the timesheet, so only company-logged hours are counted and actual AI time is higher.
My scope
I define requirements, split tasks, make the data-control and architecture decisions, review and accept; agents draft code, tests and docs.
Approach
- AI output is controlled by tests, screenshots, recordings and hands-on checks; all code and config goes through version control and review.
Verification
Timesheets and Git history before and after the turning point.
Results
| Metric | Value | Source | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Share of hours logged as programming | 19% → 33% → 44% (H1 2025 → H2 2025 → H1 2026) | Timesheets | System record |
| My hands-on time : AI execution | 8:2 → 2:8 (six steps, see chart above) | Own estimate; steps follow Claude model releases | Own estimate |
| My Git commits | 326 in 21 months before → 1,296 in 16 months after | 17 internal repos | System record |
| New repositories | 3 → 13 | First-commit dates | System record |
| Windows test environment setup | 1–2 weeks → 1 day | Own estimate | Own estimate |
Limits and next steps
Only part of my repos are counted, and commits are not outcomes; each case’s acceptance evidence is what counts.
Tools
- Claude Code
- Codex