Building with AI: What I Know, What I Built, and Where I Stand

A Personal Experience with AI-Assisted System Development — Using NDM-TCP as a Case Study An honest technical reflection — not a research paper. Introduction This article is a transparent look at: What it actually feels like to build a real system with heavy AI assistance Where AI genuinely helps, and where it quietly fails you What I understand, what I built, and how honest I can be about the gap between those two things Where I stand right now, and what I plan to do next The system I built is called NDM-TCP — a Linux kernel TCP congestion control module. But this article is not really about NDM-TCP. NDM-TCP is just the thing that happened when I mixed curiosity, AI assistance, limited time, and a willingness to experiment. The real subject is what that process taught me about using AI as a building tool — what it gives you, what it takes from you, and how to use it without losing the thing that matters most: your own understanding. This is not