The moment I realized we needed an audit, not another patch Link to heading

I ran into this while working on an older control we were trying to improve without replacing outright.

The approach was to layer newer behavior on top of legacy behavior. At first, that worked pretty well. We got the main behavior mostly where we wanted it, and AI helped move things forward quickly.

Then the edge cases started showing up.

So we fixed those.

Then we noticed side effects.

So we fixed those too.

After a while, I realized we were no longer just improving the control. Some of our fixes were starting to interfere with its native behavior. The added layer and the original control were beginning to get in each other’s way.

That was the turning point.

The next step was not another patch. The next step was a full audit: what happens first, what happens next, which part is responsible for what, and where our own changes were creating conflicts.

That is one of the habits AI work has reinforced for me.

Sometimes the right move is not to keep pushing forward.

Sometimes the right move is to stop, trace the sequence, and recover the big picture.

Related guide Link to heading

For the broader lesson behind this experience, see Don’t Let AI Help You Lose the Big Picture.