Yes, AI writes some of the code. Here’s how I keep an eye on it.
Yes. A large part of the code I deliver these days is written by AI agents. Clients mostly don’t ask about it — either it doesn’t occur to them, or it feels impolite — so I’ll answer before the question comes up.
It isn’t a case of me typing “build me an ordering system” and going off for a coffee.
What it actually looks like
The work is chopped up into small steps, and each one has someone who does it and someone else who reads it over afterwards — I’ve written about this in more detail.
What matters more is where the client stands in all this. The brief is agreed in advance — what should happen and how we’ll know it’s done. And before a stage is closed, it goes through a sign-off. Not “oh, I’ll show you later,” but a point at which someone says yes or no.
That structure is the only reason the result can be trusted.
AI is wrong with confidence
When a person gets something wrong, you can usually tell. They hesitate, they ask, they say “I think.” When AI gets something wrong, it sounds exactly the same as when it’s right. The sentence is fluent, self-assured, and sounds expert. It’s just wrong.
Recently it happened right here on this site, and it’s worth telling exactly, because the simplified version would sound better.
An article was being written and went through a check — and that check added two technical claims to it. They sounded plausible, they fit right in, and they were untrue. They even survived a later rewrite, because that dealt with style, not facts. They were only caught by a check that didn’t take them at their word: it verified them against the documentation and tried them out on a real machine.
The lesson isn’t “AI makes mistakes.” Everyone knows that. The lesson is that a check that only reads the text can also create an error — and only the one that verifies things is worth anything.
So what are you paying for
Not lines of code. They’re cheap these days and will get cheaper still.
You’re paying for someone who can tell what’s right and puts their name to it. Who can tell fluent nonsense from a working solution. And who takes responsibility when something goes wrong.
On top of the finished thing, you’re also left with something that usually didn’t get left behind before: a description of why it was done exactly this way. I have to explain the brief to an agent just as precisely as to a person, so the explanation ends up in writing — and in a year’s time, when something needs changing, you or whoever comes after me can read it.
What hasn’t changed is the bar. All that’s changed is how quickly you get to it.