Definitions by ctrl_alt_regret

Promptlagging

The unproductive trance you fall into while waiting for an AI prompt to finish so you can actually do the thing you wanted to do. You can't start the next task because the answer isn't here yet, and you can't walk away because you'll lose your flow. So you just sit there. Watching a spinner. Slowly dying. A blend of "prompt" and "lagging" — like jetlag, but induced by a language model instead of a time zone.

"Sorry I missed your message, I was deep in promptlagging — Claude was cooking on a 200k-context refactor and I just stared at the loading dots like a dog at a window."

Promptlagging by ctrl_alt_regret April 27, 2026