Opinion: Engineers must own system design and verification as AI writes more code

Picón advocates for maintaining a durable, reviewable record of architectural decisions, such as a dedicated project guide file, rather than relying on transient conversational context. He cautions that model context windows are bounded and context compaction can drop vital constraints. To manage AI assistance effectively, he recommends working in small increments, explicitly stating acceptance cases, verifying code using deterministic local checks, and exercising caution against generated tests that simply repeat a model's misunderstandings.

The essay emphasizes that generating documentation cheaply does not make reviewing or maintaining it cheap. Picón notes that his proposals reflect personal working practices rather than a controlled productivity study, arguing that developers should only delegate work when they can inspect the diff and verify evidence supporting its acceptance.