Working is not the same as trustworthy
An AI agent can ship something that runs in production on day one. That is real, and it is useful. The trouble starts on day sixty, when the codebase has quietly become a place nobody wants to go.
The tell-tale signs
- Every new feature takes longer than the last.
- The same logic lives in five files, each slightly different.
- Nobody can explain how a given part actually works.
- Even the agent that wrote it can no longer fix it.
It works. That is exactly why it is dangerous — nobody feels the debt until a change breaks something they did not know was connected.
What we do about it
We read the codebase, document how it truly behaves, and cut it back to
something a human can hold in their head. Less code, clearer boundaries, and
a QA checklist so your own team stays in control after we leave.