Stop trusting AI coding agents.

Last week, I caught myself doing something I never thought I'd do as an engineer:

I accepted an AI-generated summary as proof.

The agent had a clean explanation. It sounded confident. It claimed tests passed. The reasoning looked solid.

And for a moment, that felt like verification.

It wasn't.

As AI coding becomes normal, I think we're developing a new blind spot: We're starting to trust claims instead of evidence.

The New Software Delivery Problem

For years, software delivery looked like this:

Developer → Code → CI → Deploy

Today, it's increasingly becoming:

Agent → Code → Claim → Verification → Deploy

That extra step matters.

An AI agent can tell you:

✅ Tests passed

✅ Linting passed

✅ Ready for merge

But what certifies those statements?

Not what the model intended.

Not what the prompt asked.

Not what sounds convincing.

What actually happened.

Confidence Isn't Evidence

One realization keeps bothering me: A skipped check and a successful check can look…