Debugging & Production Incidents with AI

Introduction When production is on fire, AI can seem like a lifeline. But using AI carelessly during an incident often makes things worse. This post covers five mistakes developers make when using AI to debug or fix production issues, and how to keep your system safe while still leveraging AI’s power. Mistake 1: Using AI to Fix Production Without Rollback Plan Description: Applying AI‑suggested fixes directly to production without ability to rollback. Realistic Scenario: 5xx errors spike. AI suggests code change. Developer applies without preparing rollback, makes things worse. ❌ Wrong Prompt: Fix this production error: NullPointerException in payment processing text Developer applies AI fix directly to production. ⚠️ Why it is wrong: No rollback plan; if fix introduces new bug, outage extends. ✅ Better Prompt: Payment service has NullPointerException in production (error rate 15%). Need fix with rollback strategy. Current state: Last deployment: 2 hours ago Canary: 10% traffic Rollbac