How I Use AI Tools Safely in Software Development

Scaffolding boilerplate, writing repetitive tests, generating draft documentation, explaining unfamiliar code, and translating between similar languages. These are areas where I review every line and the cost of a mistake is low.

Anything touching customer data, secrets, or proprietary algorithms. Anything where I cannot easily verify correctness. Anything load-bearing that I haven't read line by line.

Read it. Question it. Reject it when it is wrong. Never paste it into production without the same scrutiny you would apply to a junior engineer's pull request.