Use AI Like a Spotter, Not a Forklift

The skill debt behind AI coding, and the simple rules that prevent it.

I shipped a fix in 18 minutes last week.

It looked clean. Tests passed. PR merged. I felt that familiar little rush: “nice, I’m fast.”

Two days later it broke in production, and I realized something worse than the bug.

I could not explain why the code worked in the first place.

The AI did not just write code for me. It quietly removed the part where I would…