On learning and building skills in the age of AI

I can’t shake a feeling: when I’m learning or building something new, I’m not actually acquiring the skill the way I used to.

Before AI, I’d write a test (I’m test engineer), fix it, set up providers, add something to the CI config — and I’d walk away confident I’d more or less mastered it, because I’d dug through the errors, tried a few times, and it stuck in memory.

Now, both small and large tasks get delegated to Claude. Sure, we write the specs and describe what we want, but the actual implementation happens on the AI’s side — that hands-on engagement just isn’t there anymore.

And that brings me back to learning: if I do everything by hand, it feels disconnected from real work. But if I do it with AI, I don’t get that deeper immersion in implementation, trial and error, that used to build the skill.

So — who’s actually learning and building new skills these days, and how? How do you find the balance?