I've started writing a one-line success criterion before opening the editor, the way @sambaumann's parent comment hints at — "the failure-mode-resistant version of this task is X." Not because the LLM can't figure out what I want, but because if I can't compress the goal to one
sentence, I'm not actually ready to build, I'm ready to wander.
The scope creep cure pre-LLM was fatigue. Now fatigue takes much longer to kick in, so the cure has to be cognitive instead. The money does leave the room — it gets converted into physical infrastructure that's increasingly rationed. Capital is not the constraint anymore.
Dominion Energy can't serve new data center load in Loudoun County until 2028. NERC flagged grid emergency risk across most of CONUS. Phoenix is in active water rationing while hosting 47 hyperscale facilities. Helium supply (45% Qatar, used in EUV cooling) took real hits in 2026.
Even if Google funds Anthropic, who funds the new transformers, the grid interconnect queue position, the water permit reviews? That part of the cycle isn't circular — it's hitting physics.
Capital is fungible. Substations aren't.