Building.
I've been a little intoxicated the last couple days. Maybe intoxicated's not the right word...more like overwhelmed. Pulled in. Attracted.
One of the things I hate about doing outreach is finding the right people. I know who I can serve and what problems I can fix, but finding people who fit that bill, at least externally, was difficult. So I'd avoid doing outreach because of the feelings involved (this is all procrastination btw).
This week, I decided that instead of banging my head against the wall, I was going to solve it once and for all. I banged out my ICP, figured out exactly who I'm able to serve and what they look like, and then—here's the part where I got addicted—I built a chrome extension (with Claude Code) to help me find them.
At least three full days have disappeared down this rabbit hole, and I can't get enough. I can simply ask Claude to build something, and it ... does it. Sure, there are bugs, and we fix them, but I could never have even begun to have dreamed of doing this beforehand.
I can, in natural language, build a piece of software that does exactly what I want it to, how I want it to, for literal pennies. Now, I'm still not an AI fan boy in the human sciences, but as far as technological/machine stuff? I'm sold.
There's nothing about the act of coding that I'm remotely sad about losing or automating—I never had it in the first place! I've convinced myself, therefore, that using Claude to code something is actually a perfect use of its functionality—bring into being a piece of software I never would have had otherwise.
What I'm noticing, though, is how addictive it feels. To me it's almost like getting sucked into a really good video game or graphic design project. It feels effortless to spend hours building and iterating, using the product and iterating some more. I almost find myself thinking of more things to build, just because I can!
But is it good to be addicted to building? Or at least building the machine? I think back to Kingsnorth's Against the Machine, and his argument that really resonated with me, that we are bringing into being something that we might not be OK with. A sort of faustian bargain, if you will.
I'm of two minds, but will be monitoring this over the next few weeks.