We need to talk about the open secret in engineering right now: We are lying to each other.
Every day, a senior engineer looks at a Pull Request generated by an AI agent. It is 500 lines long. It was written in four seconds. The syntax is perfect. The logic seems sound.
The engineer scrolls. They check a few variable names. They spot a typo in a comment. And then, because they have five other meetings and three other PRs, they type “LGTM” and hit merge.
But they don’t mean it. They don’t know if it works. They are just hoping it does.
The Infinite Liability Machine
We have spent the last two years optimizing for velocity. We built tools (Copilot, Cursor, Jules) that allow us to generate code at the speed of thought.
But code is not an asset. Code is a liability. Every line you merge is a promise you have to keep at 3 AM when PagerDuty fires.
By making code generation free, we have made liability generation free. And we haven’t updated our verification tools to match. We are trying to audit a machine-gun with a magnifying glass.
The Diff is Dead
The problem isn’t the AI. The problem is the interface we use to verify it.
The “diff” was designed for a world where humans wrote code line-by-line. When a human writes code, the intent is usually clear in the diff. You can trace the thought process.
AI doesn’t have a thought process. It has a probability distribution. It doesn’t care about “intent.” It cares about token prediction.
Reading a 500-line diff to understand behavior is like reading sheet music to hear a symphony. It’s possible for a genius, but it’s inefficient for the rest of us. And when the music is being written at 1000 notes per second, it’s impossible.
Confidence Requires Evidence
If “confidence” is the feeling that this code will behave correctly in the real world, then confidence is downstream of evidence.
You cannot get evidence from text. You can only get evidence from reality.
- Text: “The button should be red.”
- Reality: Clicking the button. Is it red? Does it work?
To close the confidence gap, we need to stop reading code and start touching it. We need to shift verification from “intellectual analysis” (reading) to “empirical observation” (using).
Enter the Reality Layer
This is why we built PrevHQ.
We didn’t build it to help you ship faster—though you will. We built it to help you sleep better.
PrevHQ takes that 500-line AI hallucination and instantly spins it up into a live, verifiable environment. It gives you a URL, not just a diff.
- Don’t read the migration: Run it against a seeded database.
- Don’t imagine the UI: Click it on your phone.
- Don’t guess the performance: Measure it.
When you can see the result, “LGTM” stops being a lie. It becomes a statement of fact.
Stop Merging Blind
The era of “reading code” as the primary verification step is ending. The era of “verifying behavior” is here.
Your AI is fast. But speed without confidence is just a faster way to crash.
Stop guessing. Start verifying.