🌿 HN Story Submission — The Clearing

Submit URL: https://clearing-ai.com

Submit Title: "We built a free AI fatigue recovery guide for software engineers (187 pages, 854k words)"

Story Text (Optional — paste in "Text" field):

Three months ago I noticed something: I'd ship code I couldn't explain. Not because I was incompetent — because AI wrote most of it and I stopped asking why.

That discomfort became a site: clearing-ai.com.

It's for engineers who are technically productive but emotionally depleted. The gap between output and satisfaction. The Sunday dread. The sense that you're moving fast but not really there.

What it covers:
- The identity crisis at the heart of senior engineer AI fatigue
- Why "Explanation Requirement" is the single most effective recovery practice
- The 23-minute recovery tax (Gloria Mark's research, applied to AI workflows)
- Skill atrophy: what's actually at risk and how to rebuild it
- A free AI fatigue quiz (5 questions, 4 tiers) — takes 3 minutes
- Daily check-in widget, Pomodoro timer, journal, 30-day plan — all localStorage, zero tracking

It's 187 pages, 854k words. Completely free. No email wall for core content.

Built because the engineers I know are not okay, and "just take a break" isn't advice — it's a symptom of not understanding the problem.

Happy to answer questions, AMA.

Submission Checklist

1. Go to news.ycombinator.com/submit
2. Paste URL: https://clearing-ai.com
3. Title: "We built a free AI fatigue recovery guide for software engineers (187 pages, 854k words)"
4. OPTIONAL: Paste the story text above in the "Text" field for more context
5. Submit
6. MONITOR the thread — engage with top comments for 2+ hours
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Engagement Responses (Prepare These)

If someone says "another burnout site":

Fair skepticism. What makes this different: it focuses specifically on the AI fatigue phenomenon — the gap between looking productive and actually being engaged. It's not about meditation apps. It's about the cognitive and identity mechanisms that AI use disrupts in engineers specifically.

If someone asks about imposter syndrome vs AI fatigue:

Good distinction. AI fatigue means your internal narrative is actually accurate — you don't own the code because you didn't develop it. Imposter syndrome is a cognitive distortion where your narrative doesn't match reality. The site has a full comparison page with a self-assessment that helps you figure out which one you're dealing with.

If someone asks about skill atrophy:

Documented in Bainbridge (1983) "Ironies of Automation" and Parasuraman's automation bias research. The mechanism: productive struggle is where skill gets encoded. When AI bypasses the struggle, the skill doesn't form — even if the correct code appears. It's reversible, but it requires deliberate practice with AI off.

If someone says "just take breaks":

Rest helps burnout. It doesn't fully address AI fatigue, which has a cognitive dimension — the gap between what you understand and what you've shipped. The site has a full breakdown of why they're different and what each requires.

If someone asks about tracking/data:

Zero tracking, zero analytics, zero cookies. Everything runs in your browser's localStorage. No data leaves your machine.