My goal for Advent of Code 2025

Advent of Code is a series of coding challenges that take place each year during December. This year it will consist of 12 puzzles released every day.

I’m continuing the practice of not using AI. Last time I was using VSCode with disabled LLM completion, this year I will be using Zed. The goal is to focus only on problem solving, not LLM assistance or other features.

I really enjoy this fragment from the Advent of Code FAQ on whether you should use LLMs:

No. If you send a friend to the gym on your behalf, would you expect to get stronger? Advent of Code puzzles are designed to be interesting for humans to solve - no consideration is made for whether AI can or cannot solve a puzzle. If you want practice prompting an AI, there are almost certainly better exercises elsewhere designed with that in mind.

Since the advent of LLMs, I feel like AoC is the perfect time to check how much I rely on them.