$ diff refactor prompting-the-ai-harder

Refactor vs prompting Lovable / Cursor harder

The AI got you 80% of the way. The last 20% is where it starts deleting your auth, re-introducing the same bug, and confidently shipping secrets to the client. More prompts won't fix that — a human who's seen the pattern will.

criterion

Refactor

Prompting the AI harder

Who owns the architecture

A senior engineer who's seen 47 of these codebases

The model, one prompt at a time

Regressions

PR review + tests catch them before merge

Fixed on Monday, re-broken by Friday's prompt

Security review

Included — RLS, secrets, auth flows audited

The model will happily hardcode a service key if asked

Understanding the whole repo

Yes — we read every file before touching anything

Limited context window, forgets your patterns between chats

Cost

Fixed price, ends when done

Unlimited tokens + unlimited hours of your time

What you're left with

A repo a real dev can maintain

A repo only the AI can maintain — and only sometimes

// bottom line

AI is great at the first draft. It's bad at the last mile — the part where 'works on my machine' has to become 'works for paying customers.' That last mile is what we do.

Send your project →

// next step

Not sure if we're the right fit? Find out in a week.

Send us your repo. We'll triage it in plain English and show you what's actually broken — no hourly fees, no scope creep, no obligation.

Start your free review →

// other comparisons

Rewriting from scratch

A dev agency