There's a pattern I keep seeing: a team adopts an AI coding tool, velocity feels higher for a few weeks, then something subtle shifts. PRs get longer. Review takes more time. Bugs show up in places nobody touched.

The tool didn't cause this. The workflow did.

AI tools are amplifiers. They make fast engineers faster and unfocused engineers more unfocused. Before rolling anything out to a team, I try to answer one question: do we have enough shared context for this to help?

If engineers don't know why a system is designed the way it is, AI suggestions will erode that design faster than any individual could.