HACKER Q&A
📣 alfred_chang

What do you usually do while waiting for AI responses?


I've noticed that when using various AI tools, there's often a short pause—sometimes a few seconds, sometimes longer, especially AI coding case—before the model returns an answer. It's an awkward amount of time: too short to switch tasks, but long enough to break your flow.

I'm curious:

- What do you typically do while waiting for an AI response? (Do you zone out? Check email? Scroll HN? Or not think about it at all?)

- What would you like to be able to do during that time? (Quick actions? Useful hints? Better progress indicators? Something else?)

- Have you seen any products that handle this waiting experience particularly well—or poorly?

Thanks!

  👤 al_borland Accepted Answer ✓
I just wait. If I start doing something else I’ll lose my train of thought and everything will take 100x longer.
👤 bdangubic
I run 8-12 terminals at the same time - never a dull moment
👤 fragmede
https://xkcd.com/303/ updated:

https://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/comments/12dpnlk/compiling_upd...

👤 matada_
I usually work on at least two tasks/feature branches at a time, so I have at least 2 terminals/agents running.

I find working on two different branches in the same repo quite manageable since the context switching is quite manageable.

I started heavily using `git worktree` to simplify my workflow; and I wrote a short blog post about it https://matada.org/posts/git-worktree-llms/

👤 vunderba
One of the advantages of a standing desk is how effortlessly you can go from working to moving, so if I'm pushing a long-running task through a heavyweight agentic system I'll try to squeeze in a couple sets of squats, lunges and jumping jacks.