I agree that being further along the Vibe end of the spectrum is the issue. Some of the other ways I use Claude don't have the same problems.

> If the result is something you can't explain than slow down and follow the steps it takes as they are taken.

The problem is I can explain it. But it's rote and not malleable. I didn't do the work to prove it to myself. Its primary form is on the page, not in my head, as it were.

I'm on the same path as you are it seems. I used to be able to explain every single variable name in a PR. I took a lot of pride in the structure of the code and the tests I wrote had strategy and tactics.

I still wrote bugs. I'd bet that my bugs/LoC has remained static if not decreased with AI usage.

What I do see is more bugs, because the LoC denominator has increased.

What I align myself towards is that becoming senior was never about knowing the entire standard library, it was about knowing when to use the standard library. I spent a decade building Taste by butting my head into walls. This new AI thing just requires more Taste. When to point Claude towards a bug report and tell it to auto-merge a PR and when to walk through code-gen function by function.

> I can explain it. But it's rote and not malleable.

The AI can help with that too. Ask it "How would one think about this issue, to prove that what was done here is correct?" and it will come up with somethimg to help you ground that understanding intuitively.