The irony is that AI agents are actually creating a new class of tools that need human operators who understand the domain. I work in web scraping/data intelligence - AI helps generate code faster, but knowing WHAT to scrape, how to handle anti-bot measures, and how to structure data for specific use cases (compliance, lead gen, market research) still requires deep human judgment.

My advice: lean into the areas where AI is a tool multiplier, not a replacement. Domain expertise + AI tools = more valuable than either alone.

Curious, what did you do for this customer? Are they technologically sophisticated? Do they have a lot of users for what they built, or are they building tools used internally by a handful of people?

For simple tasks and code that doesn't change much over time, programmers don't add a lot of value over what an LLM can provide. It's easy to prompt your way to a good-enough tool for a small and exclusive set of users. Managing complexity beyond that is where a real programmer provides value.

Experienced developers provide a deep understanding of what's possible, knowing what to build, how to avoid pitfalls, how to adapt to new requirements. The expertise is in managing projects that evolve over time, meet the needs of hundreds to thousands of users, interact with external systems, have meaningful compliance, performance, and security requirements, etc.