The Hidden Tax of AI-Assisted Development (And How I Fixed It)
Thomas Connally
Every AI coding session starts the same way. You open your editor, the assistant says hello, and you spend the first five minutes orienting it. "What branch am I on?" "What services are running?" "Where did we leave off last session?" "Is the test suite green?" It's a tax you pay on every session. Multiply that by days, weeks, a whole team — it adds up to a real cost in both time and attention. And tokens, if you're paying by the token. The Industry's Answer: Runtime Tool Calls The standard solu