🤖"I need help with my AI-written task!"

AI thrives on good examples. Our task library — tasks.mechanic.dev — is full of good examples.

And if you get too stuck, hire a human. :) We've got those at partners.mechanic.dev.

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Hey there! :) I'm Isaac, the creator of Mechanic. Those two lines above are the most important things to know. Keep reading if you're curious.

AI makes it super easy to create code. This is awesome. I'm so, so excited about this. The more the merrier.

This means Mechanic needs to learn something too: how to work with AI coders that can easily produce well-formed code but might not understand the patterns that Mechanic itself strictly abides by.

An AI can rapidly produce code, and it'll be good-looking code, but if the AI doesn't understand Mechanic the code might not work at all. In a very real way, it becomes a case of Mechanic not understanding the AI.

This is an interesting bind: because AI changes faster than Mechanic, it becomes a question of how best to guide the AI. For folks who understand code less than the AI, this puts everyone in a rough position: the AI is doing its best but can't tell when it doesn't understand, and the human is doing their best but can't tell when the AI doesn't understand, and all Mechanic knows is that it's being given something it doesn't understand.

As of this writing (currently June 12, 2025), AI is getting better at Mechanic. It's definitely getting better. But, still:

• AI code often "invents" Mechanic features that do not exist (like writing task code in YAML, or compiling action objects into a JSON array)

• AI code often fails to invoke necessary Mechanic features (like subscriptions!).

• Intelligence is a game of guessing intelligently: AI often sort of just guesses at what task code is supposed to generate.

Mechanic, as a platform, is a place for solving things together. "Together" works best when everyone's honest about where they're at. Mechanic's a good place for that. :)

The AI path with Mechanic is getting better, but it's not smooth yet. If you're having trouble with this, head to learn.mechanic.dev/custom — that page has an overview of the smooth paths that do exist.

To learn about how we at Lightward Inc roll with AI, please visit lightward.ai, and say hello. :)

No matter what: thank you for being here. ❤️

=Isaac