AI-native development

Why it matters

The shift this names is organisational before it is personal. When AI is assumed at every stage rather than reached for occasionally, the question flips from should we use it here to why aren’t we, and that default reshapes how a team is built and how people grow. Review capacity, not typing speed, becomes the scarce resource, so teams structure and staff around judgment rather than raw output. The harder problem sits underneath. If AI writes the first draft of everything, the traditional way juniors built instincts, by writing the tedious code themselves and feeling where it breaks, is gone, and the profession has not settled on what replaces it. Treating AI as the default is fast becoming how modern teams simply work. Working out how they train the next generation of reviewers is the open question beneath it.

In practice

On an AI-native team, every ticket begins with the model drafting an approach and the code, and the developer directs, corrects and signs off. The live worry is the junior in that setup. Handed a first draft for free, they reach a working result faster than ever, but the slow apprenticeship that used to build reviewing instinct, writing the awkward code yourself and feeling where it breaks, has to be rebuilt on purpose, because the old path to it has gone.