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2024 was the year AI stopped feeling like a side experiment and started feeling like part of the working stack.

The biggest change was not speed. It was structure.

What changed

• routine work got easier to delegate
• review became part of the workflow instead of an afterthought
• local execution mattered more than hype
• security thinking moved earlier in the process

The numbers were useful, but the bigger shift was behavioural. I spent less time wrestling with one-off tasks and more time building repeatable paths.

What worked

The pattern that kept showing up was simple:

1. keep the sensitive bits local when possible
2. make the outputs reviewable
3. use the repository as the record of truth

That combination did more for consistency than any single tool choice.

What I would change

If I were doing it again, I would write more of the operating rules earlier. The systems worked better once the guardrails were explicit.

That is usually how these things go. The tech is rarely the hard part. The hard part is deciding how much freedom the workflow should really have.