Three Tabs and a Headache

Three separate Claude instances running on different projects. I’m tabbing between them. I think I’m keeping up. I slept poorly. My head is hurting. The insomnia has been bad this week and I’m running on coffee and stubbornness.

One agent is rewriting a component. Another is fixing tests I broke yesterday. The third is… I alt-tab to it and I genuinely can’t remember what I asked it to do. I re-read the context. Thirty seconds gone. I tab back to the first one and it’s made a decision I disagree with. I correct it, tab to the second, and the tests are failing for a different reason now.

This is me orchestrating. Except it’s not orchestrating. It’s just stress with extra screens.

The part nobody talks about

Everyone writes about AI agents like they’re magic. “Just prompt it and walk away.” Cool. Except my brain won’t let me walk away. ADHD means I need to check. Anxiety means I need to verify. And the combination means I’m context-switching every forty-five seconds, retaining nothing, and somehow ending the day exhausted despite the AI doing most of the actual work.

The bandwidth isn’t the AI’s. It’s mine. I’m the bottleneck. I’m the slow, anxious, sleep-deprived router trying to keep three fast machines pointed in the right direction.

What actually helped

I stopped being the router.

Instead of managing three separate agents, I started talking to one orchestrator. Just… talking. Like a conversation. “The border is clipping on the website.” “Token usage feels high, look into it.” “Write an article about this.” “Oh and the cursor is broken on mobile.”

All different projects. All different concerns. One stream of consciousness. I didn’t open a new tab. I didn’t frame a careful prompt. I just said what was on my mind and it got handled.

The first time it clicked, the relief was physical. Like putting down a bag I didn’t realise I was carrying.

Anyway here’s Wonderwall

This week I sat down and just started talking. Fixed a CSS border bug that had been annoying me. Got token usage data that explained why my bill felt wrong. Added skills to my website. Wrote this article. Fixed cursor behaviour on mobile. All in one sitting, one conversation, no tab-switching.

I didn’t plan that session. I didn’t write a task list. I just brought up whatever was on my mind, and things happened. The orchestrator figured out which project, which files, which context. I just kept thinking out loud.

That’s what it’s supposed to feel like. Not managing. Just thinking.

I’m still bad at this

I want to be real. I’m not writing this from the other side. I’m writing this from the middle.

Some days I nail it. Thoughts flow, things get built, I barely think about the process. Other days I fall straight back into old habits. Too many tabs. Scoping too loosely. Watching an agent loop for fifteen minutes because I forgot to set a limit.

I still burn through tokens running Opus when Sonnet would do the job. I still catch myself hovering over outputs when I should be doing literally anything else.

But I can feel the difference now. I know when I’m orchestrating and when I’m babysitting. That awareness didn’t exist six months ago. Back then it was all babysitting and I didn’t even know it.

The point

I’m not here to tell anyone how to use AI agents. I’m still figuring it out myself. But the shift from “I manage the agents” to “I talk and things happen” changed how my days feel. Less dread. Less tab-switching. Less of that specific headache you get from context-switching all day.

On the days it clicks, I finish work and I’m not exhausted. That’s new. That’s worth writing about.

I’m not there every day yet. But on the days it clicks, it really clicks.