Coding agents don’t fail because the model is weak. They fail because the environment they land in is noisy, inconsistent or ambiguous. This post shows senior engineers and tech leads how to reshape one slice of a real-world repo so agents behave predictably instead of drifting.
AI writes TypeScript with calm confidence but feels far less predictable in PHP. After digging into why, I realised the difference had nothing to do with the model and everything to do with structure. TypeScript gives AI clear signals. PHP often gives it none. In this post, I break down why that matters and how you can bring that same clarity into PHP and WordPress today.
When I stopped treating AI like a magic code machine and started treating it like a product manager and a junior engineer, everything got easier. Clearer requirements. Faster delivery. Much calmer engineering.