The implicit promise of AI coding assistants was that tests would become a thing of the past. The reality documented by Kent Beck, ThoughtWorks, and several 2025 studies is the opposite: with AI, tests become essential — but the work has shifted.
Testing
In the previous article, I introduced pi-secured-setup — a pi extension that adds Guards, Scanners, and an audit trail to your AI coding agent. It ships with sensible defaults: boundary enforcement, protected path globbing, bash command classification, secret redaction, skill verification.
But every project has unique risks. A Terraform shop needs different rules than a Node.js monorepo. A team with strict compliance requirements needs different audit granularity than a solo developer.