The trap of the 'Generate' button
When I first started using AI-powered editors like Cursor, I fell into the same trap as everyone else. I would write a prompt, hit generate, and watch a wall of code appear. It felt like a superpower. For the first hour, productivity spiked. By the end of the week, I was spending more time debugging subtle hallucinations than I would have spent writing the code from scratch.
The problem is that AI is great at syntax but often blind to the architecture of your specific project. It suggests a library you are not using or creates a function that ignores a critical edge case in your data model. When you let the AI drive, you stop thinking about the 'why' and start focusing on 'does this run'.
Shifting to AI-assisted navigation
I changed my approach. Instead of asking the AI to write the feature, I started using it to navigate the codebase. This is where the real value lies.
