I've always had a habit of keeping secrets "in plain sight". I'd deploy a cool new tool for my own trial run, and I'd use it for myself, taking on the responsibility and all the sharp edges that come with it. Developers would basically never just find and use them, because nobody really bothers to look at manifests that:

• Are not documented.
• Exist in no handbook.
• Have not been announced.
• Are not in directories/repos developers don't need for their everyday functions.

AI has changed this drastically. It can now be a matter of days, and devs start finding, using, extending and productizing my bleeding edge infra. On the surface, that sounds like something I should celebrate. But it leads to "formalization" of these systems way too early, before I - the stakeholder of them - can get a feel for them.

In a jokey kind of way, it almost feels like an invasion of privacy. Like a coworker peeking at emails on my laptop screen and asking what I'm going to do in Berlin next month.

To be fair - it's my own damn fault for storing these manifests in a place visible by developers. And I should probably stop rolling out experimental infra every time I feel inspired. But it's how I work, and my style of work is valued in my various workplaces.

So, a learning for myself is probably to clearly label stuff that's not intended for company-wide use.

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Edit: actually, having thought about this, the learning is that I should stop rolling out pseudo-secretive infra, and instead formalize all workflows equally, so devs and myself have to roll out and maintain things using the same exact workflows. No secrets means everything is reviewed and understood, and I'm no longer tempted to run half-assed stuff because nobody will look.