The walking tour I half-attended

Last week, during a three-hour walking tour in Istanbul, I fixed a production bug from my phone. It was super productive. But on second thought, I kind of enjoyed it — and that worried me.

Here’s the backstory. I had a semi-urgent task for Oval Brief: a Fiverr-run closed test had just surfaced one more critical issue I wanted fixed and retested before the engagement wrapped in the next day or two. Pushing it until after our family trip wasn’t an option, and we’d booked a walking tour in the Sultanahmet area for that morning. Instead of worrying about finding time at my laptop late in the day, I figured I’d try Claude Code’s remote control.

I created a session in the React Native repo and activated remote control. Then, during the walk, I logged into Fiverr, pulled the report, copied the issue description, and pasted it into the remote session via the Claude mobile app.

The agentic coding workflow is actually quite well suited for “on the go” while doing some light activity, like a walking tour. By definition, it isn’t an intense, in-depth coding session — rather, it’s prompting, waiting, giving feedback, waiting, and eventually implementation. Then a PR flow with a triggered code review, so more waiting while those complete. After two or three review cycles, the PR was ready to merge. The fix turned out to be in the backend rather than the mobile app, which Claude handled gracefully as the backend repo was in a sibling folder. It deployed automatically to staging, ready for retesting. A quick message back to the freelancer, and everything was done well before the tour was over.

I truly am torn about this.

On the one hand, this was efficient. Instead of peeling away from the family for an hour, I was there the whole time. Yes, I wasn’t as immersed in the tour as I could have been, but as far as balancing family time and work demand, it was perfect. And to be very honest with myself, I enjoyed getting stuff done. Maybe more importantly, I had to admit to myself that I welcomed the distraction. I might have been bored otherwise at times during this rather long walking tour.

But maybe therein lies the problem. I wasn’t fully present in the moment, and while I was being productive, it probably is just my version of addictive doomscrolling — and maybe not good for my mental health.

It also reveals how coding has changed with AI. From an immersive and rewarding activity in itself to something that can be done on the go and doesn’t draw its reward from the activity itself, but purely from the outcome. Balancing mental health and being able to peel away from constantly producing with AI will only become harder, not easier.

As I’m writing this with pen and paper in a nargile bar in Istanbul, I realize I at least have the benefit of this analog stuff still deeply ingrained in my circuits. That won’t be the case for generations growing up with these tools.