A Developer's Guide to Safe AI-Assisted Coding in 2026

AI assistants are a genuine productivity win. They also introduce failure modes that didn't exist when every line was hand-written. Here's a practical checklist for staying safe without slowing down.

1. Verify dependencies the AI introduces

The highest-leverage habit: never pip install an AI-suggested package without checking it's real. A single command covers it:

```bash
mirago check .
```

This catches hallucinated imports and slopsquats before they land.

2. Read the code, don't just run it

AI output is a draft. Skim for logic that doesn't match the intent, hard-coded secrets, and calls to functions that may not exist in the real library.

3. Keep a lockfile

Pin your dependencies so the versions you reviewed are the ones that ship. Trusted, declared dependencies are exactly what mirago treats as safe.

4. Automate the boring checks

Put verification in CI and (eventually) your editor, not just your memory. See Adding mirago to CI.

5. Mind the deeper mistakes

Beyond fake packages, watch for fake functions, wrong arguments, and code that doesn't do what its comment claims. These are harder to catch and matter more as models improve at the surface level.

6. Least privilege

Run installs in isolated environments. Don't give a script more access than it needs.

The mindset

Trust AI to accelerate the work, not to be the final authority. A cheap, automatic verification layer at the points where trust used to come from human judgement is what makes AI-assisted coding safe as well as fast.