Judging Fatigue

Or: the green lights are on, and you don't know where to put your body

2026-09-14

Third in a six-part series on what building with AI agents did to one developer. Two faces of the same volume as the previous piece: this one is the person inside the judging machine; that one is where the tyrant has abdicated, with only talk left in the hand.

Before I turned off the light I glanced at the terminal. All green.

I should have been glad. I couldn't be. Something had been scooped out of my stomach. Not tired — tired knows to lie down, and lying down brings the blood back. Empty. Lying down doesn't bring it back. Hand on the edge of the keyboard, wanting to touch nothing. Tomorrow's to-do had already checked "one more verification layer" for me. The checkmark was cold. Once, when a stretch of code ran through, heat still seemed to sit in the palm. Now the heat is on the model's side. On my side only the edge faces out: pass, fail, add one more. Edge facing out long enough, and what it grinds is yourself.

For a while I fooled myself with a cleaner question. Hand the judging to another model; pin the landing on the run result. The problem looked solved. I stared at that architecture diagram, looking for a place to put myself. None. The chest stayed tight. The cleaner the solution, the more it felt like pressing a correct answer over a wound.

Useful? Useful. The old line — if it scares you, don't trust it, run it yourself — I walked again until it bled. Useful does not feed. You do useful work and stay empty; under the empty, guilt grows, scolding you for never being content. Guilt steals another cut.

Until one day I asked it out loud. Not loud: what am I actually doing all day.

The answer was quiet too. Quiet enough to want to duck. All day: judging. QC for what the model made. Distill this, then distill that. Not making. Traces of making stay in someone else's output; your day is a chain of permits and rejects. On paper, two words apart — make, judge. In the body, a whole missing return of blood. The instant it lined up, months of drift suddenly had a name — the name comforts no one. The name leaves nowhere to hide.

What I saw later was not consolation. It was the place on the line — things pass in front of you, and none of them are yours.

Friday night. I opened the week's work log.

Forty entries. Pass, thirty-six. Fail, four. None signed by me. My column said "confirmed." I sat with those three words a while and could not remember reading the reason on a single one of the forty.

Monday's came closest. The reason field had text; the cursor rested on it for a beat. I meant to click in and look — the hand had already confirmed. Hand faster than eye. When the eye caught up, the page held one line: confirmed 17:42. I looked a few seconds. Did not click back.

Under the lamp I counted the week again. Forty "confirmed," zero reasons. Log closed.

It was not always like this. One night was full.

I posted the tool later. One comment came in. Short, pointed at a hole: "Your rule fails on a different set of inputs." I read it twice. The blood came back — the heat forty confirmations that week could not give. I sat down, patched, ran, patched again. Next morning it was fixed; I posted the note. That whole day the palm was warm.

Later it became one rule among the others. When I looked at it again I could no longer remember how warm the hand had been the night I patched it. Then I caught myself scrolling comments. Not afraid of flame — looking for the next one like that. The kind that could keep me up another whole night, warm again.

Three months of judging before I understood: the only night I was full, someone had judged me first. That comment. In this seat I am not waiting for the machine — I am waiting for the next person to judge for me.

When I made things, the body tired and the palm stayed warm. After a full day of judging, the veins feel pumped out. AI took making and left judging. The seat is still held; under the cushion there is nothing to draw. Not a hero burned out — a part screwed into a slot that needs you and does not feed you, quiet for a long time where it ought to ring.

That verification system built to dodge self-judgment — papers in order, tests in order. I built it. I work in its belly. The green is its. The empty is mine. The more qualified it gets, the more I look like the layer being digested.

Writing this far has not made me un-empty. Words grow, like making; the eye still measures: is this paragraph painful enough, clear enough. Measuring, the person is back in judging. No supply arrived. Only a sharper fix on the map: I feed the machine, the machine is lit, I am dark.

I sat a while. Did not close the terminal. Did not open a new window. The green still stings. It stings, and I will not close it — closing would be admitting the day was wasted.

The fatigue of judging is not tiredness. It is empty.

Terminal still green. Person still empty. Two lights, same room, neither acknowledging the other.

Previous in this series: The Mirror Cannot Reflect Thought · From "show me your code" to "show me your idea" · To follow: The Boundary of the Harness · A Reviewer Nailed Me in Six Places