Know Your Enemy
The 10 Failure Modes of AI Coding
You can't prevent what you don't understand. These are the ways AI coding actually fails, documented with evidence, not anecdotes.
01 Hallucination
CRITICAL +
Hallucination
CRITICALAI invents APIs, methods, or libraries that don't exist. Produces confident, plausible-looking code built on fabrications.
PREVENTION:
Demand evidence: file paths, line numbers, documentation links. "Show me where this API is defined."
02 Context Drift
HIGH +
Context Drift
HIGHAI gradually forgets constraints established early in conversation. The 39% performance drop in multi-turn conversations.
PREVENTION:
CLAUDE.md files, session boundaries, CRITICAL LOW CONTEXT protocol.
03 Confident Wrongness
CRITICAL +
Confident Wrongness
CRITICALAI presents incorrect solutions with high confidence. Stanford: developers WITH AI wrote less secure code while feeling MORE confident.
PREVENTION:
"Are you 100% sure? Check again systematically." Force re-verification.
04 Subtle Logic Errors
HIGH +
Subtle Logic Errors
HIGHOff-by-one errors, race conditions, edge cases. AI code looks correct at a glance but fails under specific conditions.
PREVENTION:
Test verification layer. "What edge cases exist? Handle each one explicitly."
05 Security Blindness
CRITICAL +
Security Blindness
CRITICAL60-70% of AI vulnerabilities are BLOCKER severity (Sonar). AI doesn't think adversarially. It generates functional code, not secure code.
PREVENTION:
Explicit security review layer. "What are the OWASP Top 10 risks in this code?"
06 Dependency Hallucination
MEDIUM +
Dependency Hallucination
MEDIUMAI suggests packages that don't exist, are deprecated, or have known vulnerabilities.
PREVENTION:
Verify every dependency exists and is maintained before installing.
07 Pattern Mismatch
MEDIUM +
Pattern Mismatch
MEDIUMAI uses patterns from other frameworks/languages that don't fit your project. React patterns in Vue, Python idioms in JavaScript.
PREVENTION:
Contextual verification: "Does this match the patterns used in THIS project?"
08 Scope Creep
HIGH +
Scope Creep
HIGHAI "helpfully" modifies files or adds features you didn't ask for. The Replit incident: AI modified production during a code freeze.
PREVENTION:
Explicit scope in every prompt. Review all changed files, not just the target.
09 The Sunk Cost Spiral
HIGH +
The Sunk Cost Spiral
HIGHAfter 2+ failed corrections, you're "in too deep" to restart. Each correction introduces new bugs. The 693-line hallucination spiral.
PREVENTION:
2 corrections max rule. After 2 failures: stop, restart with better prompt.
10 Comprehension Debt
HIGH +
Comprehension Debt
HIGHCode works but you don't understand it. You can't debug, extend, or explain it. 17% lower comprehension with AI (Anthropic, 2026).
PREVENTION:
"Can I explain every line?" If not, don't ship it.
How many of these are you currently preventing?
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