Review what the AI wrote

You are the senior engineer now. Here's how to actually read a generated change.

Here’s the mindset shift that makes you good at this: when the AI writes code, you’re not the typist — you’re the reviewer. Your job is to read the change and decide whether it’s right. That sounds hard. It’s a skill, and it’s learnable.

Accepting code you didn’t read is the #1 mistake

The AI is confident. Its code looks clean. It’s usually right. All of that makes it easy to hit “accept” without looking — and that’s exactly how bugs and security holes slip in. A suggestion being well-formatted tells you nothing about whether it’s correct.

Read the diff, not the vibe

You already learned to read a diff in the last module. That’s your main tool here. Before accepting a change, scan it and ask three questions:

• Did it change more than I asked? If you asked to fix a button and it also “helpfully” rewrote your database code, that’s a red flag.
• Did it delete anything I need? Watch the red - lines. AI sometimes removes code it didn’t understand.
• Do I roughly understand what each part does? You don’t need to grasp every line, but if a whole section is a mystery, ask the AI to explain it before accepting.

$git diff
@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ function saveUser(user) {
-  db.save(user);
+  db.save(user);
+  sendMarketingEmail(user.email);
}

That diff was supposed to be a small fix — but it quietly added a sendMarketingEmail call. Reading the diff caught something you never asked for. That’s the whole point.

Ask “why,” not just “what”

When you don’t understand a piece of generated code, the AI is also your best tutor. Paste it back and ask: “Explain what this does and why.” You’ll learn faster than from any textbook, because you’re learning on your own real code.