A Pattern I Keep Seeing: Apps Built Fast With AI, Breaking Just as Fast

There's a pattern I keep running into: something gets stood up quickly with an AI coding tool, it works fine through the demo and the first real users, and then small, unrelated changes start breaking things nobody can quite explain.

Why it happens

AI tools are very good at producing code that looks like it works — the app loads, the button does the thing. They're not naturally good at the parts that don't show up in a demo: input validation, security, or structuring the code so one change doesn't ripple into three unrelated bugs.

What usually happens next

By the time someone calls about this, the app is usually live, in use, and too important to just turn off — which means the fix has to happen without breaking what's already working. That's a different job than building something from scratch, and it starts with actually reading the code before touching anything.