What do you tell an AI coder before it edits an existing project?
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Starting a new app with AI is easy. Editing an old project is where I see things go wrong: it rewrites a file that was fine, ignores the existing structure, or changes something nobody asked about.
What do you give it before it touches the code? A short notes file, the folder structure, a list of files it must not change, or just the task?
Curious what has actually worked for you on projects that already have users.
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Each project has a README the agent reads first, written as the project's memory: what exists, why, and what was tried and dropped. Rule: never delete an old conclusion, mark it as superseded. That stops the agent from "fixing" something we already decided against. For a bigger change I write a plan first that names the files it should touch. If a task ends up editing a file outside that list, it has drifted from the plan and stops.