A growing number of software developers are complaining that AI coding tools are causing them to become addictive. Popular agentic AI systems like Anthropic, OpenAI, and the open-source tool OpenClaw have been seen as contributing to this addiction. OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy, co-creator of the term "vibe coding," has been in a state of AI psychosis since December, where he spends 16 hours a day issuing commands to agent swarms. Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan has called his experience "cyber psychosis" and posted that he stayed up 19 hours and didn't sleep until 5AM. Researchers from Boston Consulting Group and UC Riverside have called the phenomenon "brain fry" from excessive use of AI tools beyond one's cognitive capacity. They found that AI-associated mental strain carries significant costs in the form of increased employee errors, decision fatigue, and intention to quit.