Engineering 14 min
Don’t Outsource Your Judgment
AI can make bad engineering decisions cheaper, faster, and harder to notice, and buying licenses and picking a model does nothing to change that. This post walks through five principles for AI-assisted engineering (Define, Equip, Remember, Verify, Learn), tested by building the same multiplayer game twice: once letting the agent choose its process, once prescribing the principles. The guided path used 26% fewer provider calls and 24% less inference spend.
David Coffey
Sep 20, 2026