I asked an AI for a login page. It changed 14 files. 11 had nothing to do with login.
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Unpopular opinion: AI coding tools are great at writing code and bad at leaving the rest alone.
Mine rewrote my config, renamed a folder, and changed how the app starts. The login page worked. The app didn’t.
Two hours later I found the cause: one renamed file.
What’s the smallest request you ever made that turned into the biggest mess?
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Halfway through, the agent lost context and rebuilt a helper that already existed two files away under a new name. It spent the rest of the run updating imports across the project to point at its own duplicate.
Two written rules keep this small for me: the agent never reformats, renames or "cleans up" code it wasn't asked to touch, and every commit lists its files by name instead of taking everything that changed. The second one turns your 14 file surprise into something you see before it lands. If the commit for a login page names a config file, that is the question to ask right there, not two hours later.