Wield AI Like a Scalpel, Not a Sword

Every line of code is a place for bugs to hide. AI changes the economics — but it is leverage, and leverage is asymmetric.

Your codebase is both an asset and a liability.

It’s an asset because it powers your business. It’s a liability because every line of code is a place for bugs to hide, edge cases to lurk, and maintenance burden to accumulate. The value of your code does not scale with its size — anyone who has spent serious time building software knows this intimately.

You know what does scale with size? The cost to maintain it. Size it right and you hold more asset than liability. Get it wrong and you’ll be paying interest on the delta for a long time. That’s why it’s called technical debt.

AI changes the economics — think of it as leverage. But the leverage is asymmetric: it’s generous when writing new code, considerably less so when maintaining existing code. If you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself accumulating liabilities faster than you’re generating value. AI didn’t change the equation. It just gave you more rope.

Wield it like a scalpel, not a sword.