Question
Your org's culture has swung to 'AI-first': there's subtle pressure to use an agent for every task, and engineers feel they're underperforming if they hand-write code. As a staff engineer, articulate the categories of work where reaching for an AI agent is actively the wrong call on your team — not because it can't produce output, but because the output is a liability. Be specific about the failure modes, and address the cultural pressure, not just the technical line.
Treat the AI’s output as a draft to verify, not an answer to trust. Name the specific flaw and the input that triggers it, say how you’d catch it — tests, edge cases, reading critically — and how you’d re-prompt or decompose to get it right.
Vibe coding: describe the solution in plain language (or narrate it) and the coach grades your approach. Generating runnable code from your description is coming next.