Your AI coding assistant builds what you ask for, it won't add what you forget

There's a gap between "build me a weather app" and getting something you'd actually deploy. AI coding assistants are great at execution. The coding isn't the problem anymore. It's the spec. Or rather, the absence of one. Say "build me a weather app" and you get a weather app. What you don't get: what happens when the API is down. Offline behavior. A content security policy. Touch targets for mobile. Dark mode that doesn't blind you at 2am. An implementation order that lets you see the design before it touches real data. The assistant can do all of this. Every single one of these things. But it won't include them unless you ask, because it executes intent, not product decisions you haven't made yet. GIGO, just more polite about it now. The specs you keep rewriting If you've built anything with an AI assistant, you've probably written the same architecture sections more than once. Data flow, UX states, trust boundaries, security checklist. The app might be simple. Getting the spec right