THE INTERROGATION PROTOCOL // Developer Intelligence in the Age of AI

The Interrogation Protocol: Developer Intelligence in the Age of AI The Wrong Skill Everyone is learning to "use AI." Prompt engineering courses. Copilot certifications. Tutorials on writing the perfect prompt to generate a React component in 30 seconds. They are developing the wrong skill. They are learning to give orders to a machine. But a machine that executes orders flawlessly is dangerous in the hands of someone giving the wrong order. The problem has never been execution speed. The problem has always been understanding what to build. The Poisoned Intuition Every project starts with an intuition. Someone — a founder, a product manager, a client — thinks things should be done a certain way. They have a vision. They know what they want. Or so they believe. 90% of the time, the request that reaches a technical team is a solution disguised as a requirement. "I want a button that does X." "I need a report with these fields." "Build an app that does this." None of these are needs. They