Don’t Let Your AI Write Spaghetti Code

When coding with AI, there’s a moment every developer knows intimately — that sinking feeling when your ambitious project begins to crumble under its own complexity. You’re three hours deep into what should have been a simple feature addition, your code is becoming an unwieldy mess, and you’re starting to question every decision that led you to this point.

Here’s the thing about AI pair programming: it’s not going to magically fix your terrible planning habits. In fact, if you’re not careful, your AI buddy will happily help you dig yourself into an even deeper hole with impressive efficiency.

After spending way too much time watching AI assistants generate beautiful, completely wrong solutions to problems I didn’t properly explain, I’ve learned a few things about keeping both human and artificial intelligence pointed in the right direction.

Write Everything Down (Your Future Self Will Thank You)

The first lesson I learned, often the hard way, is that markdown documents aren’t just nice-to-haves — they’re your insurance policy against future confusion. When you’re deep in the trenches of a complex implementation and things start breaking down (and they will), having a comprehensive record of your plans, decisions, and discoveries becomes the difference between “oh…