How to Make AI Coding Assistants Actually Useful (Stop Fighting Framework Drift)

AI coding assistants are legitimately useful. They're also consistently wrong in a very specific, frustrating way — and most developers haven't found the fix yet. This post explains the problem and how to solve it permanently. The Problem: Framework Drift Let me describe something that probably sounds familiar. You're working on a Next.js 15 project using the App Router. You ask your AI assistant to add server-side data fetching to a new page. It generates this: export async function getServerSideProps ( context ) { const data = await fetchData ( context . params . id ); return { props : { data } }; } That's Pages Router. It doesn't work in App Router. You correct it, and a few prompts later it does it again. Or you're working on a React 19 component. The AI wraps a component in forwardRef — a pattern that's now unnecessary because ref is a regular prop. Or it suggests a useEffect pattern that React's new compiler handles automatically. This isn't the AI making things up. It's the AI p