Of all the psychoses I've taken part of, this current AI coding one sure is my favourite.
Never have I felt this unlocked, locked in, ambitious and unconstrained by time or skill. And even at 10x (or whatever) the output, I am never done.
Every time I get the thought "I've always wanted this app to do it like this" I can just dream it and build it. Prompt, prompt, prompt, Poof! (Literally.)
Especially for what they call bespoke software: Software just for one. There are many apps but this one is mine.
When turnaround is this fast, you barely have to justify the effort.
I've built my own email app. I use it for 99% of my email reading and writing. It does everything (just about) I need and exactly how I want it to. I can run through a full inbox faster than in any other app I've tried before. (Which weirdly acts as a justification to my whack-ass mind for ignoring my inbox for longer. Can't fix me, apparently.)
It has its rough edges, it's imperfect, it's unapologetically opinionated to my tastes. You can't have it.
It used to be that at least you would open source the work because that way the effort would pay itself back in clout somehow and, I don't know, nerd karma?
But now. Building an entire email app solely for myself isn't an absurd idea. It's already done.
What's that Spellbook.app you ask? Well, it's just the bespoke Markdown reader app I was dreaming of. Unapologetically opinionated. I use it all the time. You can't have it.
I haven't read the source code of either. Just, like, parts of it. I know how they work but not through strict code review.
The first leap of faith is to use codex --yolo and skip the permissions checks. Let the AI run like the wind.
The second is to stop reading the code.
The code doesn't matter. Sometimes – but honestly, most of the time, not. It's not there to be good code, it's there to do a good job.
And when there's only one user to take the L when it eventually wipes your entire harddrive: you – even more so.
I don't think everyone will be building their own bespoke software anytime soon. It's still not easy, it's just faster. Building is a skill but more so it's a personality trait.
This psychosis is the best thing to ever happen to my computer use.
Because I keep running into people in apparent disbelief that coding agents can do Real Programming, I decided to wear it loud and proud by creating a GitHub badge for all my projects that wouldn't have existed without coding agents as Certified Shovelware
– Certified Shovelware by Justin Searls
Here are some agent transcripts of apps and tools I've been building.
Mostly, you just use Codex and talk to it like you would to another human. No weird loops, crazy skill packs or MCP mega structures.