My reaction to this question is that it might technically be in good faith, but you're pushing it.

Let's say that LLMs didn't exist, and I learned these same skills in an oddly specific hands-on workshop, or from an oddly specific textbook, or fuck it, let's say that I hired some greybeard pedal designer to just sit beside me and answer all of my stupid questions without judgement for a few weeks at their hourly rate.

Would you feel compelled to challenge whether I had retained what I learned or inexplicably woke up this morning, tabula rasa, and realized that I'd forgotten everything I spent a week teaching myself? I honestly don't think that you would.

For the record, I could reimplement any part of the circuit on demand if I needed to. I might be tempted to look at my notes for the JFET switching because it was genuinely hard to keep in my head, but that's more of a confidence thing than a "shit, I forgot how op-amps work" thing.

I've since implemented a variation into a matrix mixer concept that I'm working on, when it detects that a TS cable has been inserted into a TRS jack.

> Would you feel compelled to challenge whether I had retained what I learned

Yes, the exact same way I would dubious when someone says they learned much from following a youtube tutorial or participating in a two week workshop or something