Why I Had to Ask a Junior Dev to Stop Using AI (For a While)

AI Is Not the Problem. Overuse Is.

A few weeks ago, I had to ask one of our junior developers to stop using AI tools like Claude and Cursor Composer for a while.

Not because they’re bad. Not because the dev wasn’t smart. But because the project was spiralling out of control.

Look at this real post from Reddit's r/ChatGPTCoding

The dev in this post isn’t alone. I’ve seen this play out in real teams.

When AI Works Too Well

AI is brilliant at small tasks. Need a function to parse CSVs? A quick script to rename files? A REST API scaffold? Done in seconds.

But software isn't a list of scripts. It’s a system. A product. Something that evolves.

In our case, the developer had stopped thinking about the system. They were prompting for every feature, every bugfix, blindly pasting in whatever the model returned. The results were predictable.

We ended up with over 30 files, overlapping logic, inconsistent naming, a routing layer no one understood, and no clear boundaries between modules. Worse, the AI began forgetting what it wrote. We spent more time untangling code than building features.

AI Doesn’t (Yet) Manage Context Like Humans

Even the best models have limits. They lose context after a few thousand tokens. They don’t understand intent, edge cases, or business constraints unless you spell everything out.

When you're debugging something messy, understanding why something is broken matters more than fixing it fast. And right now, AI can’t hold that level of understanding over time.

AI can generate code. It can refactor code.
But it can't yet own a codebase.

You can.

What We Did Instead

We paused AI for a week. No prompts. Just engineering.

We reviewed the project, drew a system map, clarified responsibilities, documented assumptions. Then reintroduced AI, but only as an assistant, not the driver.

Now, we treat AI as a co-pilot, not an autopilot. We write docs before prompts. We verify logic before shipping. And we keep the architecture in our heads, not just in the model's context window.

Use AI. But Stay in Charge.

If you're a junior dev, AI might feel like magic. But don’t trade away your understanding of the system.

If you're a senior, remember: "AI-assisted" doesn't mean "production-ready." You still need to review, reason, and refactor.

AI is a tool. But you're still the engineer.