An assistant on timeout shouldn’t mean a developer on timeout. The teams that rely on AI best are the ones that can still work without it.
Stay unblocked
- Keep an offline list of tasks that don’t need AI: code review, docs, test cleanup, triage.
- Keep your fundamentals sharp. Write some code by hand each week, especially in the parts of the system you own.
- Understand what you merge. If you can’t explain AI-written code, you can’t fix it when the assistant is unavailable.
Think of the assistant as a power tool. It speeds you up, but you should still know how to use a screwdriver.