No worries, at some point your hit the wall with it and the reality will force you to look at the code. It won't be nice, but until that point delulu land is sustainable enough to fall forward

>The more I use it, the more I have to rely on it to make changes/ fix things in the same system. In the end, I come out feeling empty; no intuitive knowledge of the system "I" built or fixed.

Most of us build a system to deliver a product to make money. We don't feel empty for not knowing how the system works, since we don't really care: it's just a means to an end.

I find that it helps a little to maintain an iron grip on the design. Take the time for really detailed change planning. Be pedantic and push back against every little thing that seems wrong or even a little odd in any plan document the LLM spews out. Likewise, watch for the for the moment when the LLM eventually stumbles and starts to make excuses for deviations from the plan. Interrupt immediately and force it back onto the plan (or your vision), potentially with pointers to resolve immediate problems. Completely unattended agents just don't work for important code.

It's the uncanny valley of AI. It's still not quite good enough that you can trust it blindly on a big codebase, so you still have to read and understand everything - which is often harder than just writing it up yourself.

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