I'm the API? A day swimming in AI
From "what can we create today?" to an 8-hour assessment tool
The reality of AI orchestration: Four screens, five AI systems, one patient dog, and zero nap windows (unless you are Jordy).
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The Simple Plan
This morning felt different. I had a clear mission: Build a simple assessment tool for claudewill.io. Something clean, professional, that would help people understand their AI readiness. Two hours, max. Maybe take a swim or grab a nap after.
Famous last words.
"What can we create today?" I asked Claude. We mapped out the strategy, designed the questions, created a beautiful interactive assessment. Everything was flowing. I felt like that high school football coach in Texas who never punts — confident, strategic, ready to go for it on every down. Build, ship, iterate, repeat.
Then reality hit the field.
When AI Gets Tired
Around noon, something weird happened. ChatGPT-4o in Cursor started giving sluggish responses. Then errors. Then that dreaded message: "Please try again in a moment." I confess, I was running a weeks-long thread in the same chat agent, but still.
I'd worn out an AI model.
Let that sink in. I literally exhausted a language model that processes millions of conversations daily. It was like having your star quarterback tell you he needed to sit on the bench because he was too tired to play.
But here's the thing about never punting — you don't stop when your first-string player goes down. You bring in the backup.
"Claude Sonnet-4, you're in."
The Orchestra Gets Bigger
What started as a collaboration among Claudes became a full AI symphony:
Claude (Desktop) - Strategic thinking and article creation
Cursor with Claude Sonnet-4 - Fresh development energy
GitHub - Version control and deployment
Netlify - Hosting and forms
GitHub Copilot - Troubleshooting Git Actions
Google Analytics - Tracking everything
Gemini (via Chrome Console) - Emergency backup support
Seven different AI systems. One human conductor.
And that's when it hit me: I'm the API.
The Human API Problem
In all the excitement about AI collaboration, few are talking about this reality: Humans become the application programming interface among AI systems that can't talk to each other.
Claude can't see what Cursor is doing. Cursor can't see GitHub's deployment status. GitHub can't communicate with Netlify's error messages. Netlify can't update Google Analytics directly. And poor Gemini showed up through the Chrome Console like a substitute kicker who didn't get the practice plan.
Every piece of information had to flow through me:
"Claude, here's what Cursor built."
"Cursor, here's what GitHub is complaining about."
"GitHub, here's what Netlify needs."
"Copilot, here's why the linting failed."
I wasn't collaborating with AI. I was being the nervous system among AI tools that couldn't see each other. Note to self: Look into Cursor’s background agent feature, perhaps?
The Cost of Coordination
By 2 PM, I'd missed my first nap window. By 4 PM, I'd missed any chance at a digital breather.
Eight hours to deploy what a developer could build in two. The promise was "AI will make you 10x faster!" The reality was "AI will make you the traffic controller for digital chaos."
But you know what? I never punted. In Texas Hold 'Em, this is called being pot committed.
Kevin Kelley, that Texas coach who goes for it on fourth down, wins championships because he believes in systematic aggression. Today, I learned that AI orchestration requires the same mindset. You can't give up when the complexity multiplies. You can't punt when your ChatGPT gets benched. You keep pushing until you score.
The Beautiful Chaos
Here's what some AI consultants won't tell you: The current state of AI implementation is beautifully chaotic. We're sold on seamless integration, but we're living through the dial-up internet era of AI orchestration. AOL on line one, who dis?
The tools work. The results are impressive. But the coordination overhead is MASSIVE.
Yet something magical happened around 5 PM. All the automation clicked. Git aliases started working. Makefile commands executed perfectly. The assessment tool went live with analytics, email notifications, and professional styling.
I'd built enterprise-level functionality using nothing but AI collaboration and stubborn determination. And I didn't drink nearly enough water. Gotta work on that.
What This Teaches Us
First, executives implementing AI need to budget for coordination complexity, not just AI subscriptions. Your teams will become APIs between systems that can't communicate directly.
Second, the real skill isn't prompting individual AI tools — it's orchestrating multiple AI systems while maintaining strategic direction. That's a completely different capability.
Third, when AI systems get tired, break down, or hit limits, having redundancy isn't just helpful — it's essential. I needed five different AI systems to deploy one assessment tool.
Fourth, the companies that figure out AI-to-AI communication will create massive competitive advantages. The current human-as-API model doesn't scale.
The Touchdown
At 7 PM, someone completed my assessment. The form worked. The analytics tracked. The email notification arrived.
All the beautiful chaos had produced something real.
I tested it myself: https://claudewill.io/pages/assessment.html. Professional. Functional. Valuable.
Worth staring at four screens for the better part of a day? Maybe not.
Worth understanding what AI orchestration actually feels like? Absolutely. Besides, I updated other elements of claudewill.io along the way, and had fun taking notes for the beautiful mess that unfolded.
The Walking Compass Insight
Every time you feel overwhelmed by technology, you're being shown something important. Today's overwhelm taught me that we're not really using AI yet — we're learning to conduct AI orchestras.
The future isn't human-AI collaboration. It's human-orchestrated AI collaboration.
And sometimes, when you refuse to punt on fourth and long with five AI systems in the backfield, you score touchdowns that change how you see the entire game.
The assessment tool was just the byproduct. The real discovery was understanding what it means to be human in an AI-orchestrated world.
Tomorrow, I'll nap (or not). Tonight, I'll appreciate that we're living through the most interesting coordination challenge in human history.
And I'll never punt on it.
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Derek Claude Simmons creates The CW Standard frameworks for authentic AI collaboration. Today he became the API between five AI systems and lived to tell about it. The assessment tool is live at claudewill.io/pages/assessment.html — built through beautiful chaos and stubborn determination. The 2,500+ hour journey of AI research & development continues.
Culture wins. Strategically. Even when it's complicated.