> I still have fears around deskilling from relying on these tools too much

I'm a millennial who builds furniture with hand tools and wood joinery from a century ago. Nobody taught me, although I did find resources online to learn from. I should not be able to do these things. Everyone should have forgotten this esoteric, obsolete, uncommon knowledge by now. Yet here I am, doing it anyway. It turns out you can just learn what you want, when you want to. I don't fear losing this skill in the future, because I can just remind myself how it works. The tools, books, videos, and wood aren't going anywhere.

You aren't going to "be deskilled" from not writing code by hand regularly. Just because you use AI doesn't mean your brain grows a black hole from which information can never return. It's not giving you Alzheimer's. There might be a small amount of time it takes for you to refresh yourself, but then you're back to work again. Just ask anyone who went from coding to managing. They're a little rusty when they go back after years of absence, but they pick it back up.

Also, especially if it's a personal project, keep in mind you do not need to burn Opus tokens. Buy any of the dirt cheap subscriptions which give you access to MiniMax. Put it in a container on yolo mode. Give it some context, a prompt, web search, and a ticket system like beads. Then let it churn. You aren't in a rush, it's a personal project. As long as you follow the brainstorm -> plan -> implementation -> testing process, and have added methods to do real testing (not mocks or unit tests), it will get done with time and money to spare.