“I made this” needs no asterisk
Software built with a coding agent is authored by the person who intended it and owns it.
Several times now, I’ve seen honest people write “I made* this” or “I built* that,” justifying the asterisk with a note that it was mostly (or entirely) done using AI.
I think it’s completely unnecessary as long as the authorship is owned. If the end result behaves, looks, and works exactly as its author intended, it is authored by them, without any asterisks, ifs, or buts.
A coding agent makes many decisions the author never sees. But code doesn’t cross the human border. The UI and UX do, and the result other people see is curated, approved, decided, and invented by a human, not AI. It is still programming, and nobody adds an asterisk for a compiler or a chisel or a drill press. Or for the answer copied from Stack Overflow. (If there is a soul left who does this anymore.)
Slop is slop no matter the tool it was made with, and the same applies to good work. The asterisk names the tool and says nothing about which of the two I’m looking at. Claiming a skill you don’t have is a different matter: a question of dishonesty, not of the usefulness or quality of the artifact.
Most (if not all) of my own tools from 2025 and 2026 were built using AI. Their pages say “I made” and “I built,” and when one of them breaks, that’s mine too.