Simon Willison's WeblogMay 31, 2026, 4:31 PM

The solution might be cancelling my AI subscription

Coding agents accelerate project creation, but their low-friction rewards can amplify distraction and abandoned work.

Simon Willison relates to David Wilson's reflection on launching more than 16 projects with AI tooling. A request for a quick Claude script can expand into an hour-long project without solving the original problem. Coding agents may produce tested, documented solutions rapidly, but people can maintain only so many projects. The critical skill may be discipline: deciding which ideas deserve continued attention.

Simon Willison shares David Wilson's reflections on AI-assisted development. David lists more than 16 projects he has started using AI tools, pointing out that many of these projects were not the result of deliberate planning: what might originally have just been asking Claude to write a script to quickly handle some task could, an hour later, turn into a larger project — and the problem he originally wanted to solve might not actually have been addressed.

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