Why Does Switching Between AI Agents Feel Like Racing?

David Heinemeier Hansson finds the switching mentally exhausting in an exhilarating way. It matches the feeling of stumbling out of a race car, barely able to hold his head up, and being glad to be alive. Racing tiredness is mostly physical. Rain adds a mental load because the car stays at the knife's edge. Le Mans gives time to relax on a long straight where the car is simply going fast in a line. Other tracks come at you the whole time. An hour in each leaves a very different kind of exhaustion.

Running agents at the limit of what a person can follow is the no-rest version. There is no passive stretch and no coasting: a problem, then the next problem, constantly in the corner. He thinks this need for constant interaction will pass. It is not quite babysitting, and it fades once more of the work is automated. From what he has seen on Omarchy, a lot of the development and debugging can get to one email a day, with a yes, a no, an in, or an out. The setup is not there yet. He thinks it will get there.