Did you build it?

Many discussions are being had across social platforms where people who are building new products or platforms are being called out for "not actually building it". But what does this even mean?

Go back 3 years ago and all code was hammered into a keyboard, your product goes live, and it either fails or succeeds. It meant you typing your code for months on end; all your hard work is there for the world to see. But there's obviously a massive shift thats been happening since then.

I'm a prime example in this. I've always had ideas but never the skills or time to learn to put something together. But now, I'm building more than ever.

See the attached graph, you can see a clear indication that in December onwards my commits have ramped up. It's not because I've started doing more; it's because I now have the means to build on my ideas with smaller effort (and a lot more Enter presses).

But does this mean I built the thing?

It was my idea. It was my knowledge and architectural patterns that helped achieve this. I know the direction. I know what I want the end result should be.

Just because I didn't hammer my keyboard into oblivion shouldn't mean I didn't build the thing.

In my eyes, I lead the team (agents) to their success. I ensured we followed best practices. I made sure security is at the forefront. I ensure each issue raised and worked on is accurate and each plan produced is meticulously reviewed. I view the decisions made by my agents to ensure nothing drifts in a certain direction.

So does this mean I built it?

Some would argue absolutely not. I'd lean towards the other day.

LLMs can't come up with ideas. They're pattern matching machines. You can ask an LLM to come up with a hundred different ideas of something brand new and I can guarantee you all of them will have already been done in some form.

You, as the human, are the idea machine and the brains of the operation. You're simply handing off the grunt work to your agent to complete the tasks. AI makes mistakes, a lot of them. It's our job to ensure those issues are picked up. The human in the loop is still required to direct, decide and architect your way around the thing that's being built.

And that to me means YOU are the one who built it.

-Dan