Should you use AI?

Nowadays there are many agentic tools, like claude and other AI models which can do lots of work for you.
While they are very impressive, there are some considerations to take when making use of them.

A central point is that, as a beginner, it is very easy to ask the wrong kind of things of an agent.
They may be less error prone than just a year ago, but they will still happily do something for you in a wrong way.
The better your understanding of the foundations is, the better you will be able to make use of those tools.

If your goal is to make a small mod for a single change, there is not much harm in using the assistance of the tool.
If you plan to make modmaking your new hobby, then restricting your usage to a certain degree is recommended.
You should try to keep a good balance, asking it for clarifications and explanation, rather than making it write the whole project for you. A lot of complex topics become easier through repetition, it is important to not lose out on this if you really want to learn.

It is also important to note that AI agents are not omniscient. They will try to get their required context, but if they cant find everything,
they will often just take the nearest approach they can imagine. Starsectors code base is large, documentation is relatively sparse, and much of more internal functioning is Obfuscated. If you dont quite know how to guide it, it may provide nonsense to you.

Notably, that nonsense can be functional, but can be full with issues that you may only notice when they occur for users. Since you are likely planning to release your mod at some point, there is some obligation to understand what you are making, and how to potentially fix it once issues occur.