I just put up a new guide and a companion field note on Ask Good Questions that I think a lot of developers here will recognize.
Guide:
https://askgoodquestions.dev/guides/the-blue-water-design
Field note:
https://askgoodquestions.dev/field-notes/the-day-i-realized-ai-was-building-daysailers
This one is about the difference between software that merely floats and software that’s actually designed to go somewhere.
A lot of AI-assisted work looks productive because the model can generate a surface quickly. It can make something that runs, something you can click through, something that looks like momentum. But if it is also inventing the rules as it goes, the result can drift faster than you realize.
That is really what these two pieces are about.
The guide takes the broader workflow view. The field note is the point where the metaphor clicked for me: AI is often great at helping build the equivalent of a daysailer, but if you want a blue water product, you probably need to decide the rules first instead of letting them emerge one prompt at a time.
I’d be interested in hearing whether that matches what others here are seeing.