In video games, NPCs—non-player characters—exist to populate the world. They have scripted responses, follow fixed paths, and react to events without actually understanding them. They look like they’re participating. They’re not really making decisions.
I’ve started using that as a mental shorthand for a pattern I notice in myself sometimes, and in teams more often.
You accept the suggestion. You merge the PR. You click through the process. You say “looks good” because it’s 4 PM and you’ve been at it since 8 and the code runs. You’re present in the physical sense—eyes open, keyboard engaged—but you’ve stopped actually thinking about what you’re doing. You’re executing the motions of engineering without the substance of it.
AI doesn’t create this problem. It predates these tools. But AI makes it easier to be productive while doing it, which makes it much harder to notice.
Here’s why that matters more now than it used to: when you’re working at human speed, the gaps in your understanding tend to surface at human speed. You’re a day into building the wrong thing before you find out. That’s painful, but recoverable. When you’re working at AI speed, you can be three features into the wrong direction before lunch. The feedback loop from “I don’t really understand this” to “we’ve made a significant mess” has compressed.
The antidote isn’t slowing down. It’s noticing. There’s a specific sensation when you’re actually engaged versus when you’re executing on autopilot—a felt difference between asking yourself “does this make sense?” and going through the motions of asking while already moving on.
Once you start noticing it, the pattern becomes hard to unsee. You’ll catch it in code review. In planning sessions. In the moment you accept a generated explanation because it sounds authoritative rather than because you verified it.
Catching yourself in NPC mode is its own skill, and probably one of the more important ones right now. The environment has gotten very good at keeping you busy without requiring you to be present.