Why AI-Generated Code Makes You Slower (And How to Fix Your Workflow)

You've probably felt this. The first week you wired an AI assistant into your editor, you shipped twice as much. By month three, you were back to your old pace — except now you were debugging weirder bugs. I've been using AI assistants in my daily workflow for about two years across four projects. The pattern keeps showing up: the productivity gains are real but front-loaded, and they erode unless you change how you work. Most of that erosion comes from one specific, fixable problem. The Problem