Clanker Sore
The persistent mental fatigue, eye strain, and existential dread caused by spending too many consecutive hours arguing with AI models, debugging prompts, regenerating outputs, or watching agents confidently invent nonsense. The AI-era equivalent of a canker sore.
Symptoms:
* Asking “Why would you do that?” to your laptop.
* Reading the same hallucinated answer five different ways, hoping one is correct.
* Accidentally saying “Good job” after an LLM finally returns valid JSON.
* Feeling compelled to open yet another chat because this prompt will definitely work.
Symptoms:
* Asking “Why would you do that?” to your laptop.
* Reading the same hallucinated answer five different ways, hoping one is correct.
* Accidentally saying “Good job” after an LLM finally returns valid JSON.
* Feeling compelled to open yet another chat because this prompt will definitely work.
“I spent eight hours getting my coding agent to stop deleting the config files. I’ve got a serious clanker sore.”
Clanker Sore by mojoroum July 8, 2026
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