Guides > Agentic Engineering Patterns > AI should help us produce better code
Changes to AI should help us produce better code
March 11, 2026, 8:21 a.m.
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If adopting coding agents demonstrably reduces the quality of the code and features you are producing, you should address that problem directly: figure out which aspects of your process are hurting the quality of your output and fix them.
-Shipping worse code with agents is a *choice*. We can choose to ship code that is better instead.
+Shipping worse code with agents is a *choice*. We can choose to ship code [that is better](https://simonwillison.net/guides/agentic-engineering-patterns/code-is-cheap/#good-code) instead.
## Avoiding taking on technical debt
March 10, 2026, 10:25 p.m.
Draft status changed from draft to published.
March 10, 2026, 10:23 p.m.
Initial version.