Where the mental models meet the day job: when to reach for AI, how to verify it, and how the role of the engineer is changing.
Lean in for prototyping, boilerplate, refactors with good test coverage, and exploration. Be cautious in regulated or safety-critical systems without rigorous verification.
Refactors backed by tests, scaffolding, and exploration — where speed compounds and mistakes are cheap.
Medical devices, aviation, finance. The ACM's April 2026 TechBrief warned that fast, unchecked AI coding often skips over core engineering practices.
Read it, test it, review it. Tests are both your verification and your best spec — red/green TDD turns the agent loose to iterate until green.
Scale autonomy with risk. The MCP spec itself recommends a human be able to deny tool invocations before they run.
The speed gains are real — but they only hold when review keeps pace with generation.