Why AI Coding Needs Anti-Patterns
Something shifted in software over the last couple of years, and most teams felt it before they found the language for it.
Read excerpt →A fantasy-RPG-inspired field guide to AI-assisted coding
A field guide to the characters and failure modes of AI-assisted coding.
Developer archetypes, organizational monsters, non-player characters, spells, and artifacts — the patterns you recognize but couldn't quite name. Two volumes of field-guide entries for teams who want to name the pattern instead of blaming the person.
Know the patterns. Name them in your next standup.
The field guide names the failure modes you've seen but couldn't quite describe — characters, monsters, and the symptoms each one leaves on a codebase.
character
The Cleric
The process will save us.
Symptom: Green builds shipping things nobody understands, AI-generated tests verifying AI-generated code, and a quiet erosion of human judgment from the review loop.
character
The Fighter
Charge first, ask questions never.
Symptom: Two hundred lines of plausible code in thirty seconds, merged before lunch. Velocity metrics love them. Postmortems hate them.
character
The Rogue
Rules are for people who get caught.
Symptom: Hot-fixed branches, missing tests, and 'I'll add the review later' that never comes. Things ship. Other things break quietly.
character
The Wizard
When all you have is a prompt, everything looks like a spell.
Symptom: Architectural decisions justified with 'the model said,' design docs that read like prompt outputs, and a creeping inability to explain why the system is shaped the way it is.
archetype
Bulldozer of AI Confidence
Charge first, ask questions never
Symptom: Large, fast pull requests that work on the happy path but crumble under edge cases. Code reviews met with 'it works, though.' When AI-generated code breaks, they don't analyze the failure — they prompt the AI again and replace the broken code with new generated code.
archetype
Daredevil of AI Disaster
Every model launch is a migration plan
Symptom: GitHub full of partially finished projects. Local environment cluttered with experimental tools. References to obscure services. Treats governance as an inconvenience for less visionary people. Can burn through thousands of dollars in API costs in a single day.
Try a diagnostic
Quizzes plus live AI tools built from the book — useful on their own, sharper after the chapters.
~60 seconds · 8 questions
Which class are you?
Find out whether you're a Fighter, Wizard, Rogue, or Cleric — and what AI is amplifying about you.
Take the quiz →~90 seconds · symptom checker
What's haunting your codebase?
Check the symptoms you've actually seen. Watch the haunting meter rank the four monsters in real time.
Run the diagnostic →Live AI · paste only
Profile Match
Paste a LinkedIn About/Experience section or a resume/bio. Get a witty bestiary match — not career advice.
Match a profile →Live AI · chat
Phantom Intern
Ask the eager, slightly hollow intern about monsters, review habits, and the field guide.
Open the chat →See what you're getting
Get the Mini-Card Cheat Sheet
A free printable PDF with all 98 cards from both volumes — characters, archetypes, monsters, NPCs, artifacts, and spells — as mini cards you can pin to your wall or hand around the team. A taste of the full deck.
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Read an excerpt
Start with the introduction, then pick a monster.
Meet the Scope Creep Kraken
If you've spent any time around AI-assisted software work, you already know the moment when the Scope Creep Kraken first puts a tentacle on the boat.
Read excerpt →The Phantom Intern Is Already on Your Team
Code appears in your repository with no clear author, no review trail, and no institutional memory. It was generated, pasted, and committed. Now it's your problem.
Read excerpt →