Does anyone else feel most AI tooling is becoming harder instead of easier?

Is anyone else feeling like most AI tooling is getting harder, not easier?

I feel like I spend half my time fighting frameworks, configs, vector DBs, and orchestration layers instead of building. Perhaps I'm doing it wrong but the ecosystem seems way more complicated than it needs to be at the moment. Just curious what people actually like working with these days.

i feel like i've hit a wall and now i spend most of my time reading docs and guides like its "Harry Potter and the Agentic Ai"

wasn't ai supposed to 69x my productivity or smth