Are non-AI dev tools becoming irrelevant?

CatsSayMEOW — Thu, 07 May 2026 01:35:14 +0000

I’m a software engineer, and a big part of my day is debugging issues reported by other teams.

Most of the time I’m:

checking tokens
calling APIs
comparing JSON responses and traces
writing docs

I kept jumping between different tools for all of this, and it always felt clunky.

I tried finding a lightweight toolkit with a clean UI and smooth workflow, but most tools either felt outdated or started adding AI features that didn’t really make sense to me — especially for workflows involving sensitive tokens or internal data.

So I ended up building a small toolkit for myself: https://qautils.catssaymeow.org/

What surprised me was that when I showed it to teammates, some of them immediately asked:

“Why doesn’t it have AI support?”

Personally, I don’t really see the need for AI in tools like JSON formatting, token inspection, API calls, etc.

Do simple dev tools actually benefit from AI, or are we just expecting AI everywhere now?

Forem: CatsSayMEOW

Are non-AI dev tools becoming irrelevant?