Complacency is the clear and present danger (kix.dev)

The piece warns that the biggest, most immediate danger in AI-assisted development is complacency: developers can become overly reliant on agents like GitHub Copilot, Cursor, and Claude Code, letting generated code pass linting, types, and tests without maintaining a mental model of the codebase. That “it works, so ship it” feedback loop erodes ownership and makes future edits harder, producing brittle, unreadable layers of AI-written code. The author — who canceled a $200 Claude Max subscription after a colleague flagged uncharacteristic code — stresses that even powerful tools don’t replace human understanding; only ultrafast inference stacks (Cerebras, SambaNova) come close to instant generation, but speed alone doesn’t solve maintainability. Practically, the author recommends treating AI like an intern: never merge code you wouldn’t personally write, favor Cursor’s fast autocomplete for inline help, use agent passes only for localized changes (avoid multi-file or scattered edits), and scrutinize any large AI PR line-by-line before applying edits yourself. For research, use Perplexity and Claude as starting points but verify sources manually. These habits preserve developer craft, reduce long-term technical debt, and keep teams from sliding into a productivity mirage that sacrifices code quality and maintainability.