AI Coding Practical Tips

Tools selected, MCP mastered, but still hitting pitfalls when actually coding. This chapter covers pitfalls I've encountered and practical tips I've extracted. These aren't theory-they're distilled from countless AI collaboration experiences.

Always Use the Best Model

Putting this first because so many people stumble here.

Strong AI solves problems in one conversation; weak AI struggles after ten rounds. Not exaggeration-real experience. Model capability gaps are exponential. The difference between Claude Sonnet and GPT-4o-mini isn't "a bit better"-it's "can do it" vs "can't do it."

Some try to save token costs by giving complex tasks to cheap models. Result: AI makes repeated mistakes, wasting massive debugging time. The money you save is worth far less than the t