Personal tools and the ease of value

With the adoption of any structure there come stories that are told to enforce its use. I have noticed one with the wider adoption of AI and its influence on software; a single person creates a tool to suit a need that is very specific or niche. In the story, as it is often told, this saves them and others a great deal of time and effort.

A few days ago I created a tool like this with AI for a problem only I was facing. It was easy, and I had as much control as I needed throughout. The value the app provides is not proportionate to the effort it took me. It required no investment from me and produced no value for anyone but me.

Open source software is changing, and will continue to change in the coming years in response to our use of AI. Discussion will be loud when repositories are flooded with new issues, cloned in a clean room, or bombarded with AI pull requests. Some changes will be silent; AI is widening the gap between a single-use tool and something releasable, and what would have crossed that gap will not.

Invisible tools with value to one.