Working with an AI assistant in the terminal is a bit like having a competent junior who never sleeps. Very useful, until the day it introduces a subtle bug nobody notices for three weeks.
My non-negotiable rule
I read every line. No exception. If I don't have time to read, I don't ship. That's the only guarantee that code quality stays my responsibility, not a model's.
Where AI actually accelerates
- Writing tests: coverage goes up and I focus on business edge cases.
- Mechanical refactor: rename, extract, move — the kind of work that takes an hour by hand and 3 minutes AI-assisted.
- Documentation: generating READMEs, changelogs, release notes from the diff.