I use Python differently because uv made many things faster, less costly. Stuff I used to do in bash are now in Python. Stuff I wouldn't do at all because 3rd party modules were an incompressible expense, now I do because the cost is low.
Same with AI.
Every week, there was a small tool I actively chose to not develop because I know that it would save less time by automating the thing than it would take coding it.
E.G: I send regularly documents from my hard drive or forward mails to a specific email for accounting. It would be nice to be able to do those in one click. But dev a nautilus script or thunderbird extension to save max a minute a day doesn't make sense.
Except now with claude code, it does. In a week, they paid off. And now I'm racking the minutes.
Now each week, I'm getting a new tool that is not only saving me minutes, but also reducing context switching. Those turn into hours, which turn into days. These compounds.
And of course, getting out a MVP, or a new feature demo out of the door quickly allows you to get feedback faster.
In general, AI lets you get a shorter feedback loop. Trash bad concept sooner. Get crucial info faster.
Those do speed up a project.