Type: url
Original: https://martinfowler.com/articles/exploring-gen-ai/ccmenu-quality.html
Status: generated
Summary
In this January 2026 “Exploring Gen AI” article, Erik Doernenburg uses coding agents (Windsurf with Sonnet 3.5, later Claude Code with Sonnet 4.5) to add GitLab support to CCMenu, a Swift Mac application, and examines the internal quality of the generated code rather than only whether it works. He describes a series of subtle problems — a wrongly non-optional token parameter patched by an unidiomatic “vibe fix”, an unnecessary cache, logic for a non-existent problem, and duplicated URL construction — and concludes that without careful oversight agents tend to introduce technical debt, while finding Claude Code with Sonnet 4.5 good enough to use regularly.