Chapter 6

Level 3: Senior Developer

The director of engineering calls you into a meeting. "We need to migrate fifteen microservices from Node 14 to Node 20. Security audit flagged it as critical. How long will it take?"

Traditional answer: "Three months minimum. Each service needs dependency updates, breaking changes fixed, tests validated, deployment pipelines updated. If we rush, we'll break production."

With Cursor: "Two weeks for the migration with proper testing. I'll orchestrate it."

You're not claiming you can type 6x faster. You're recognizing that most migration work is mechanical—update package.json, adjust deprecated APIs, regenerate lock files, update CI configs. AI handles mechanical work flawlessly. Your role is orchestration: defining the strategy, establishing quality gates, catching the edge cases AI misses, and ensuring nothing breaks.

This is the senior developer's superpower with AI: turning individual productivity gains into organizational capability. You become a force multiplier—one senior with AI can produce output equivalent to a small team while maintaining higher consistency.

Leading Delivery Through Strategic Orchestration

At the senior level, the shift is from implementation to coordination. You're no longer measured by how much code you write but by how effectively you unblock systems, teams, and architecture. AI amplifies this by handling execution while you focus on strategy.

System-wide coordination patterns

Large-scale changes require careful orchestration. Here's how AI changes the approach:

Traditional monolith-to-microservices migration:

  • Month 1: Design service boundaries, document APIs
  • Month 2-4: Extract services one by one
  • Month 5: Integration testing
  • Month 6: Gradual rollout
  • Bottleneck: Actually writing the migration code

AI-assisted migration:

  • Week 1: Design service boundaries, define contracts
  • Week 2: AI generates service scaffolding for all services
  • Week 3: Review generated services, adjust business logic
  • Week 4: Integration testing and deployment

You didn't write 10,000 lines of boilerplate. You designed the architecture, specified requirements, and validated correctness. AI handled execution.

Example: Framework upgrade across 12 microservices

You need to upgrade React 17 → React 18 across twelve frontend microservices. Traditional approach means visiting each repo individually, fixing breaking changes, testing, debugging subtle issues. With AI orchestration:

Analyze upgrade impact across all frontend services:

Services: @frontend/user-dashboard, @frontend/admin-panel, 
@frontend/checkout, @frontend/analytics, [... 8 more]

For React 17 → 18 upgrade, identify:
1. Breaking changes affecting each service
2. Dependencies needing updates
3. Code patterns requiring changes
4. Testing strategy per service
5. Rollout sequence (dependencies between services)

Generate a comprehensive migration plan.

Cursor analyzes all twelve services and generates a structured plan:

React 18 Migration Plan

Impact Summary
  • 8 services: Low impact (no breaking changes)
  • 3 services: Medium impact (hydration changes needed)
  • 1 service: High impact (uses deprecated ReactDOM.render)
Migration Sequence
  1. Low-impact services (parallel): user-profile, settings, notifications, help-docs, search, analytics, reports, feedback
  2. Medium-impact services (after low): user-dashboard, checkout, admin-panel
  3. High-impact service (last): legacy-reports
Breaking Changes by Service
legacy-reports (HIGH IMPACT)
  • Line 45: ReactDOM.render → createRoot
  • Line 89: Deprecated componentWillMount → useEffect
  • 23 warnings about strict mode
user-dashboard (MEDIUM IMPACT)
  • Hydration mismatches in SSR (12 instances)
  • useEffect infinite loop (pages/Dashboard.jsx:67)

[... continues for each service]

Dependencies to Update
  • react: 17.0.2 → 18.2.0
  • react-dom: 17.0.2 → 18.2.0
  • @types/react: 17.0.43 → 18.2.15
  • @testing-library/react: 12.1.4 → 14.0.0
Migration Steps
  1. Update dependencies (all services)
  2. Run codemod for API changes
  3. Fix type errors
  4. Update tests
  5. Validate in staging
  6. Canary deploy (10% traffic)
  7. Full rollout

Now execute systematically:

Generate a codemod for React 18 migration:

Transformations needed:
1. ReactDOM.render(app, container) → 
   const root = ReactDOM.createRoot(container); root.render(app)
2. ReactDOM.hydrate(app, container) →
   const root = ReactDOM.hydrateRoot(container, app)
3. Remove componentWillMount, replace with useEffect
4. Update Suspense fallback types
5. Fix StrictMode warnings

Output: JSCodeshift codemod following patterns in @codemods/
Include: before/after examples, testing instructions

Cursor generates a codemod you test on one service, validate, then apply systematically across all twelve. What would have taken six weeks of manual work happens in one week with higher consistency—every service follows identical patterns.

The new senior role

You're the architect who designs the migration, establishes quality gates (test coverage, performance benchmarks, rollback procedures), and validates the output. AI is the construction crew that executes the plan across dozens of services simultaneously.

Team force multiplication

Studies show senior developers with AI achieve 30-50% productivity gains individually. But the real multiplier comes from enabling others:

  • Create prompt libraries that junior/mid developers can use
  • Establish .cursorrules that enforce architectural patterns
  • Build codemods that solve entire categories of problems
  • Generate comprehensive documentation that onboards new team members

One senior who creates a good prompt library can 2x the productivity of ten developers. That's a 20x force multiplier, not a 1.5x personal productivity gain.

Using AI for System-Wide Impact

Large-scale refactors and upgrades—traditionally slow and error-prone—become tractable when you combine AI execution with senior engineering judgment.

High-leverage use cases

1Dependency upgrades at scale

Analyze dependency risk across all services:

Repos: [list 20+ microservices]

Identify:
- Outdated dependencies (>6 months behind latest)
- Security vulnerabilities (npm audit / Snyk)
- Breaking changes in major version updates
- Dependencies blocking other upgrades
- Circular dependency issues

Prioritize by: security risk > breaking change complexity > effort
Generate upgrade plan with estimated effort per service.

Cursor produces a prioritized list:

HIGH PRIORITY (Security)

1. axios 0.21.1 → 1.6.2 (CVE-2023-45857)

Affected: 12 services

Effort: Low (backward compatible)

2. jsonwebtoken 8.5.1 → 9.0.2 (CVE-2022-23529)

Affected: 8 services

Effort: Medium (signature verification changes)

MEDIUM PRIORITY (Major versions)

3. TypeScript 4.9 → 5.3

Affected: All services

Effort: High (enum changes, type narrowing)

4. Jest 27 → 29

Affected: All services

Effort: Medium (snapshot updates needed)

Now execute upgrades systematically:

Generate migration guide for jsonwebtoken 8.5.1 → 9.0.2:

Services affected: @auth-service, @api-gateway, @admin-api, 
@user-service, @payment-service, @notification-service, 
@analytics-service, @reporting-service

For each service:
1. Identify all JWT sign/verify calls
2. Show required code changes
3. Generate migration tests
4. Update CI/CD to use new version
5. Document rollback procedure

Create a checklist PR template for each service.

2Framework migrations

Migrating from one framework to another across multiple services:

Plan migration: Express.js → Fastify for API services

Services: @api-gateway, @user-api, @order-api, @payment-api

Analysis needed:
1. Express middleware → Fastify plugins (equivalents?)
2. Request/response API differences
3. Error handling pattern changes
4. Testing approach differences
5. Performance benchmarks (baseline vs migrated)

Generate:
- Side-by-side comparison of common patterns
- Migration checklist per service
- Adapter layer for gradual migration
- Integration test suite

Cursor generates a comprehensive migration guide including an adapter pattern that lets you migrate incrementally:

// Adapter: Run Express middleware in Fastify
function expressToFastify(expressMiddleware) {
  return async (request, reply) => {
    // Translate Fastify req/res to Express format
    const req = createExpressRequest(request);
    const res = createExpressResponse(reply);
    
    await new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
      expressMiddleware(req, res, (err) => {
        if (err) reject(err);
        else resolve();
      });
    });
  };
}

// Use existing Express auth middleware in Fastify during migration
fastify.addHook('onRequest', expressToFastify(authMiddleware));

This lets you migrate one route at a time, not entire services atomically—dramatically reducing risk.

3Architecture evolution

Breaking down monoliths or evolving system architecture:

Design service extraction plan:

Current: Monolith @legacy-api (47,000 lines)
Target: Extract user management into @user-service

Analysis:
1. Identify all user-related code (models, routes, business logic)
2. Find dependencies (what else uses user code?)
3. Design API contract for new service
4. Plan data migration strategy (shared DB vs separate?)
5. Identify shared utilities to extract first
6. Generate strangler fig pattern implementation

Create:
- Service boundaries diagram
- API contract (OpenAPI)
- Database migration plan
- Rollout strategy (feature flags, traffic splitting)
- Rollback procedure

The strangler fig pattern lets you gradually route requests to the new service while keeping the monolith as a fallback—AI generates both the new service and the routing logic.

Execution playbook for system-wide changes

Phase 1: Discovery and mapping (1-2 days)

  • Inventory all affected services/components
  • Identify dependencies and integration points
  • Map data flows and API contracts
  • Assess test coverage and quality gates

Phase 2: Design and ADR (1-2 days)

  • Write Architecture Decision Record (ADR) documenting approach
  • Define success metrics and rollback criteria
  • Design migration strategy (big-bang vs incremental)
  • Establish monitoring and observability requirements

Phase 3: Generate and validate (3-5 days)

  • Use AI to generate codemods, adapters, and migration code
  • Test on one representative service thoroughly
  • Validate performance impact (benchmarks)
  • Run security scans
  • Get senior/principal review

Phase 4: Execute incrementally (1-2 weeks)

  • Roll out in waves (low-risk services first)
  • Monitor metrics at each wave (error rates, latency, throughput)
  • Use feature flags for instant rollback
  • Collect feedback and adjust approach
  • Document learnings for subsequent waves

Phase 5: Validation and cleanup (3-5 days)

  • Run full integration test suite
  • Conduct load testing
  • Security audit
  • Update documentation
  • Post-migration retrospective

This structured approach, combined with AI execution, reduces multi-month projects to weeks while maintaining quality and safety.

Creating Reusable Prompt Libraries for Teams

Senior engineers scale their expertise by turning knowledge into reusable assets. With AI, this means building prompt libraries that encode your experience and architectural decisions into templates others can use.

Prompt library structure

/team-prompts/
├── README.md (usage guide, conventions)
├── architecture/
│   ├── adr-generator.md
│   ├── service-extractor.md
│   ├── migration-planner.md
│   └── api-design.md
├── refactoring/
│   ├── extract-service.md
│   ├── optimize-queries.md
│   ├── add-resilience.md
│   └── modernize-async.md
├── security/
│   ├── audit-auth.md
│   ├── add-rate-limiting.md
│   ├── fix-injection.md
│   └── secure-api.md
├── observability/
│   ├── add-logging.md
│   ├── add-metrics.md
│   ├── add-tracing.md
│   └── create-dashboard.md
└── metadata.json (tracking usage, owners, versions)

Example: ADR Generator Prompt

# Generate Architecture Decision Record (ADR)

## Purpose
Creates comprehensive ADR for major architectural decisions

## Usage

Generate ADR for [decision]:

Context: @[relevant-docs] @[existing-architecture]

Decision: [What we're choosing to do]

Stakeholders: [Who's involved/affected]

## Template
The prompt will generate:

**Status**: Proposed | Accepted | Deprecated | Superseded

**Context**
- What's the situation?
- What forces are at play?
- What constraints exist?

**Decision**
- What did we choose and why?
- What's the high-level approach?

**Considered Alternatives**
For each alternative:
- Description
- Pros
- Cons  
- Why rejected

**Consequences**
- What becomes easier?
- What becomes harder?
- What new capabilities emerge?
- What technical debt are we accepting?

**Implementation Plan**
1. Phase 1: [steps]
2. Phase 2: [steps]
3. Success metrics
4. Timeline estimate

**Risks and Mitigations**
- Risk 1: [description] → Mitigation: [approach]
- Risk 2: [description] → Mitigation: [approach]

**References**
- Related ADRs
- Documentation
- External resources

## Example

Generate ADR for: Move from REST to GraphQL for our API

Context: @docs/api-architecture.md @services/

Decision: Migrate public API to GraphQL while maintaining REST for internal services

Stakeholders: Frontend team, Mobile team, API team, External partners

## Version
v2.1 - Last updated: 2025-10-15
Owner: @senior-backend-team

Example: Resilience Refactoring Prompt

# Add Resilience Patterns to Service

## Purpose
Systematically adds circuit breakers, retries, timeouts, and graceful degradation

## Usage

Refactor @[service] to add resilience:

Focus on:
- External API calls
- Database queries
- Message queue operations
- File system access

Add patterns:
1. Circuit breakers (fail after N consecutive failures)
2. Retry with exponential backoff
3. Timeouts for all I/O operations
4. Graceful degradation (fallbacks)
5. Health checks
6. Observability (metrics, logging, tracing)

Follow patterns from @services/resilient-example

## Generated Artifacts
- Circuit breaker wrapper for API calls
- Retry decorator with backoff
- Timeout configuration
- Fallback implementations
- Health check endpoints
- Monitoring dashboard config
- Tests for failure scenarios

## Quality Checklist
After generation, verify:
- [ ] Circuit breaker thresholds reasonable (failure rate, timeout)
- [ ] Retry policy appropriate (max attempts, backoff strategy)
- [ ] Timeouts set per operation (not global)
- [ ] Fallback behavior documented
- [ ] Metrics collected for all failure modes
- [ ] Tests cover: success, timeout, retry, circuit open

## Example

Refactor @payment-service to add resilience:

External dependencies:
- Stripe API (payment processing)
- Fraud detection service
- Email notifications (SendGrid)
- Database (PostgreSQL)

Current issues:
- No retries on transient failures
- Stripe timeout crashes entire checkout
- No circuit breaker (cascading failures)

Expected improvements:
- 99.9% uptime (current: 97.2%)
- Graceful degradation when Stripe slow
- Fraud check failures don't block orders

## Version
v3.0 - Last updated: 2025-10-12
Owner: @platform-team

Prompt library governance

Ownership and maintenance

  • Each prompt has a designated owner (responsible for updates)
  • Quarterly review cycle (mark stale prompts for update/retirement)
  • Usage analytics tracked (which prompts are most valuable)
  • Version control (track changes, rollback if needed)

Quality standards

# .prompt-standards.yml
required_sections:
  - purpose
  - usage_example
  - expected_output
  - quality_checklist
  - version
  - owner

review_process:
  new_prompts:
    - author_test: "Must test on 3 real scenarios"
    - peer_review: "2 senior approvals required"
    - documentation: "Complete usage guide"
    
  updates:
    - backward_compatibility: "Flag breaking changes"
    - migration_guide: "If behavior changes significantly"
    - version_bump: "Semantic versioning"

retirement_criteria:
  - unused_for: "90 days"
  - replaced_by: "Better prompt exists"
  - deprecated_tech: "Targets obsolete framework"

Measuring prompt effectiveness

// scripts/prompt-analytics.js
const promptUsage = {
  'adr-generator': {
    usageCount: 47,
    avgRating: 4.8,
    avgTimeSaved: '45 minutes',
    successRate: '92%', // Output accepted without major changes
    lastUsed: '2025-10-14',
    owner: '@senior-team'
  },
  'add-resilience': {
    usageCount: 23,
    avgRating: 4.6,
    avgTimeSaved: '2 hours',
    successRate: '87%',
    lastUsed: '2025-10-15',
    owner: '@platform-team'
  }
};

// Monthly report
generateReport({
  topPrompts: sortBy(usageCount).slice(0, 10),
  timeSaved: sum(avgTimeSaved * usageCount),
  lowPerformers: filter(successRate < 70),
  stalePrompts: filter(lastUsed > 90_days_ago)
});

Tracking metrics shows which prompts deliver value and which need improvement or retirement.

Prompt Recipes for Senior-Level Tasks

Recipe 1: System-Wide Migration Planner

Plan migration: [source tech] → [target tech] across services

Services: [list all affected services]

Generate comprehensive plan:

1. **Impact Analysis**
   - Breaking changes per service
   - Risk level (low/medium/high)
   - Dependencies between services
   - Shared libraries needing updates

2. **Migration Strategy**
   - Big-bang vs incremental
   - Service migration sequence
   - Rollback approach at each phase
   - Feature flags / traffic splitting

3. **Technical Approach**
   - Code changes required
   - Codemods / automation opportunities
   - Database schema changes
   - Configuration updates

4. **Testing Strategy**
   - Unit test updates
   - Integration test additions
   - Performance benchmarks
   - Security scans

5. **Rollout Plan**
   - Phase 1: [services] (weeks 1-2)
   - Phase 2: [services] (weeks 3-4)
   - Success criteria per phase
   - Monitoring / alerting

6. **Risk Mitigation**
   - Top 5 risks with mitigations
   - Rollback procedures
   - Communication plan

Deliverable: Markdown document + checklist per service

Recipe 2: Extract Microservice from Monolith

Design service extraction plan:

Monolith: @[monolith-repo]
Target service: [service-name] for [domain]

Analysis:
1. Identify all code related to [domain]
   - Models / data access
   - Business logic
   - API routes
   - Background jobs
   - Tests

2. Map dependencies
   - What depends on this code?
   - What does this code depend on?
   - Shared utilities to extract first
   - Database tables to migrate

3. Design API contract
   - REST/GraphQL endpoints
   - Request/response formats
   - Error handling
   - Authentication/authorization

4. Data migration strategy
   - Separate database vs shared
   - Migration scripts
   - Zero-downtime approach
   - Data consistency guarantees

5. Strangler fig implementation
   - Routing layer (proxy pattern)
   - Feature flags
   - Gradual traffic shift
   - Rollback procedure

Generate:
- Service scaffolding
- API contract (OpenAPI)
- Migration scripts
- Routing/proxy logic
- Tests (unit + integration)
- Deployment config
- Rollback runbook

Recipe 3: Add Comprehensive Observability

Add observability to @[service]:

Current state:
- Logging: [current approach]
- Metrics: [current approach]
- Tracing: [current approach]

Target state:
- **Logging**: Structured JSON logs with:
  - requestId (trace requests across services)
  - userId (for user-specific debugging)
  - Operation context (what was being done)
  - Error details (stack traces, error codes)
  - Performance data (duration, memory)

- **Metrics**: Prometheus/StatsD metrics for:
  - Request rate (requests/sec)
  - Error rate (errors/sec, by type)
  - Latency (p50, p95, p99)
  - Business metrics (orders/sec, revenue)
  - Resource usage (CPU, memory, connections)

- **Tracing**: Distributed tracing with:
  - OpenTelemetry instrumentation
  - Span creation for all operations
  - Context propagation across services
  - Integration with existing traces

- **Dashboards**: Grafana dashboards showing:
  - System health (RED metrics)
  - Business KPIs
  - Error breakdown by type/endpoint
  - Latency heatmaps
  - Anomaly detection

- **Alerts**: Alert rules for:
  - Error rate >1%
  - Latency p99 >500ms
  - Availability <99.9%
  - Resource exhaustion

Generate:
- Logging middleware
- Metrics collection code
- Tracing setup
- Dashboard configs
- Alert rules
- Runbook for common issues

Recipe 4: Security Hardening Audit

Conduct security audit of @[service]:

Focus areas:

1. **Authentication/Authorization**
   - JWT validation (algorithm, expiry, refresh)
   - Session management (timeouts, invalidation)
   - Role-based access control (RBAC)
   - API key security

2. **Input Validation**
   - SQL injection vectors
   - XSS opportunities
   - Command injection risks
   - Path traversal vulnerabilities
   - Deserialization attacks

3. **Data Protection**
   - Sensitive data encryption (at rest, in transit)
   - PII handling compliance
   - Password hashing (algorithm, salt, rounds)
   - API secrets management

4. **Rate Limiting & DoS**
   - Rate limits on all endpoints
   - Resource exhaustion protection
   - Slowloris/slowpost defenses

5. **Dependencies**
   - Known CVEs in dependencies
   - Outdated packages
   - Unused dependencies

For each issue found:
- Severity (critical/high/medium/low)
- Exploit scenario (how to attack)
- Fix implementation (code changes)
- Test to prevent regression

Generate:
- Security audit report
- Prioritized fix list
- Code changes for each issue
- Security tests
- Updated security documentation

Avoiding the "Elegant but Fragile" Trap

AI excels at generating clean, elegant-looking code. The problem: elegance often masks fragility. Code that handles the happy path beautifully but crashes on the first unexpected input.

Common fragility patterns

1. Pattern misapplication

AI suggests a beautiful one-liner:

// Elegant!
const userEmails = users.map(u => u.profile.email).join(', ');

Looks perfect. Crashes when:

  • A user has no profile (profile is undefined)
  • A profile has no email (email is undefined)
  • The users array is empty (harmless but edge case)

Senior engineer's fix:

// Resilient
const userEmails = users
  .filter(u => u.profile?.email)
  .map(u => u.profile.email)
  .join(', ') || 'No emails available';

2. Missing business context

AI generates perfect CRUD operations for a Product model:

async function deleteProduct(productId) {
  await db.query('DELETE FROM products WHERE id = ?', [productId]);
  return { success: true };
}

Technically correct. Practically disastrous:

  • What if the product is in active orders?
  • Should we soft-delete instead of hard-delete?
  • What about product images in S3?
  • Audit trail requirements?
  • Inventory adjustments needed?

AI doesn't know these business rules. You do.

3. Edge case blindness

AI implements authentication:

async function verifyToken(token) {
  const decoded = jwt.verify(token, SECRET_KEY);
  return { userId: decoded.userId, valid: true };
}

Doesn't handle:

  • Token expiration (crashes on expired tokens)
  • Invalid token format (crashes on malformed input)
  • Key rotation (uses only one key)
  • Clock skew (time-based validation issues)
  • Revocation (doesn't check blacklist)

Senior review catches these:

async function verifyToken(token) {
  try {
    // Verify with current and previous keys (rotation support)
    let decoded;
    for (const key of [CURRENT_KEY, PREVIOUS_KEY]) {
      try {
        decoded = jwt.verify(token, key, {
          algorithms: ['RS256'],
          clockTolerance: 30 // Handle 30s clock skew
        });
        break;
      } catch (e) {
        continue; // Try next key
      }
    }
    
    if (!decoded) {
      throw new InvalidTokenError('Token verification failed');
    }
    
    // Check revocation list
    if (await isTokenRevoked(decoded.jti)) {
      throw new RevokedTokenError('Token has been revoked');
    }
    
    return { userId: decoded.userId, valid: true };
  } catch (error) {
    if (error.name === 'TokenExpiredError') {
      throw new ExpiredTokenError('Token has expired');
    }
    throw new InvalidTokenError('Invalid token');
  }
}

Mitigation strategies

Failure-first reviews

When reviewing AI code, ask: "What happens when this fails?" before asking "Does this work?"

Questions to ask:

  • What if the input is null/undefined/empty?
  • What if the API call times out?
  • What if the database is down?
  • What if two requests race?
  • What if the user provides malicious input?
  • What happens at scale (1000x normal load)?

Stress testing and property-based testing

Don't just test happy paths. Generate edge cases:

Generate property-based tests for this function:
@[function]

Test invariants:
- Function never crashes (returns error instead)
- Output type always matches expected type
- Side effects are idempotent
- Performance stays under 100ms even with large inputs

Use [fast-check / QuickCheck / Hypothesis] to generate
random inputs that stress-test the implementation.

Feature flags and canary releases

Never ship AI-generated changes directly to 100% of traffic:

# Deployment strategy
phases:
  - name: canary
    traffic: 5%
    duration: 1 hour
    success_criteria:
      - error_rate < 0.1%
      - p95_latency < 200ms
      - no_critical_alerts
    
  - name: rollout
    traffic: 50%
    duration: 2 hours
    success_criteria: [same as above]
    
  - name: complete
    traffic: 100%
      
rollback_triggers:
  - error_rate > 1%
  - p99_latency > 1000ms
  - critical_alert_fired

Shift-right validation

Don't rely solely on pre-production testing. Use runtime checks:

  • DAST (Dynamic Application Security Testing): Run security scans against live staging environments
  • Chaos testing: Inject failures (kill services, delay responses, corrupt data) and verify graceful degradation
  • Synthetic monitoring: Continuously test critical flows in production
  • Real user monitoring (RUM): Track actual user experiences, catch issues tests miss

AI code is a polished draft. Your job as a senior engineer is ensuring it's production-ready: resilient to failures, secure against attacks, performant under load, and maintainable over time.

Key Takeaways

ℹ️
Orchestration, not implementation

Senior engineers design systems, define quality gates, and validate correctness. AI handles execution across dozens of services simultaneously.

ℹ️
Force multiplication through knowledge sharing

One senior creating prompt libraries, .cursorrules, and codemods can 10x the productivity of an entire team.

ℹ️
System-wide changes become tractable

Framework migrations, dependency upgrades, and architecture evolution that used to take months now take weeks when AI handles mechanical work.

⚠️
Elegant code isn't production-ready code

AI generates clean implementations that often miss edge cases, business rules, and failure modes. Senior judgment is critical for resilience.

ℹ️
Shift from typing speed to thinking speed

Your competitive advantage is architectural vision, security mindset, and understanding of failure modes—AI amplifies these strengths.

ℹ️
Incremental rollouts prevent disasters

Feature flags, canary deployments, and observability catch AI-introduced issues before they affect all users.

The next chapter explores how principal engineers operate at an even higher level—using Cursor to drive architectural shifts, encode organizational knowledge, and mentor entire teams through prompt packs and frameworks. The principles remain consistent: AI handles execution, humans handle judgment. The scope just continues to expand.