Small errors compound

Fly from Stockholm to New York with a 1% leftward lean. No corrections. You’ll miss Manhattan by over 100 kilometers.

This is AI-assisted development without a clear destination.

Each generated function that’s “close enough” creates a small deviation. The AI suggests Axios when you use Fetch. It abstracts the user model differently than your auth system. It handles errors with try-catch instead of your Result types.

Twenty iterations later, your codebase has drifted into unfamiliar territory.

The drift is subtle. Each suggestion seems reasonable. The AI solves the immediate problem. The code works.

Working code aimed at the wrong target is still failure.

A flight plan isn’t just knowing you want to reach New York. It’s knowing your route, your waypoints, your altitude. In code, that means architecture decisions, patterns, constraints. All defined before you start.

Just like pilots check waypoints, you need architectural checkpoints. Regular moments to ask: Is this still the system I intended to build?

Moving faster in the wrong direction just means arriving at the wrong destination sooner.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​