I Built a Pet Emotional Support AI — Here Are the 5 Wildest Edge Cases We Hit

TL;DR We built an AI-powered pet wellness companion. Users love it. Our error logs are... a lot. Here are five real architectural decisions we got wrong — and how we fixed them. Background My team built MyPetTherapist — an AI companion that helps pet owners understand, support, and connect with their animals on a deeper level. Think: behavioral guidance, emotional check-ins, and personalized routines — all powered by LLMs. We expected the hard parts to be the AI. The hard parts were the humans. Edge Case #1: The Grieving Owner Our first prompt design was optimized for happy, curious pet owners. system_prompt = """ You are a cheerful pet wellness assistant. Help the user understand their pet ' s behavior and emotional needs. Keep responses warm, fun, and encouraging. """ Within the first week, a user wrote: "My dog passed away yesterday. I don't know what to do." Our AI responded with: "That's wonderful! Let's explore some fun enrichment activities!" The fix: Sentiment pre-screening bef