My system design prep was just copy-pasting between two AI chats. So I fixed that.

I passed my system design interview. The prep was embarrassing. Two weeks out, my workflow looked like this: Tab 1 — AI interviewer asking me to design a URL shortener. Tab 2 — AI mentor (different chat) where I'd paste the interviewer's question and ask "wait, what's a consistent hash ring again?" Copy. Switch tab. Paste. Wait. Copy answer. Switch tab. Paste into interview. Repeat. Every. Single. Time. And that was just the communication problem. There was no whiteboard. I had to describe my system architecture in text. "So, the load balancer forwards to service A, which talks to cache B, which falls back to database C..." Imagine trying to explain a distributed system like that. The interviewer had to imagine it. I had to imagine it. Nobody could actually see anything. Then the organization problem hit. After a week, I had 30+ chat threads. No labels, no structure. When I wanted to revisit how I'd approached rate limiting, I couldn't find the conversation. It was easier to just start