AI is an accelerant, not a replacement for skill. At least, not yet.

I built a full stack app in Python+typescript where AI agents process 10k+ near-real-time decisions and executions per day.

I have never done full stack development and I would not have been able to do it without GitHub Copilot, but I have worked in IT (data) for 15 years including 6 in leadership. I have built many systems and teams from scratch, set up processes to ensure accuracy and minimize mistakes, and so on.

I have learned a ton about full stack development by asking the coding agent questions about the app, bouncing ideas off of it, planning together, and so on.

So yes, you need to have an idea of what you're doing if you want to build anything bigger than a cheap one shot throwaway project that sort of works, but brings no value and nobody is actually gonna use.

This is how it is right now, but at the same time AI coding agents have come an incredibly long way since 2022! I do think they will improve but it can't exactly know what you want to build. It's making an educated guess. An approximation of what you're asking it to do. You ask the same thing twice and it will have two slightly different results (assuming it's a big one shot).

This is the fundamental reality of LLMs, sort of like having a human walking (where we were before AI), a human using a car to get to places (where we are now) and FSD (this is future, look how long this took compared to the first cars).