Before letting an AI coding tool make changes, ask it to explain its plan first.
Catching a misunderstanding in a one-line plan is way cheaper than catching it in a 200-line diff. A plan takes a few seconds to read and correct. A diff built on a wrong assumption takes real time to review, untangle, and re-explain — and if it slips through review, you're now debugging code that was doing the wrong thing confidently.
Why this works
Most AI coding tools support a plan-first or read-only mode precisely for this reason. Use it. A misread requirement is obvious in one sentence and easy to miss across a dozen changed files.
In practice: state the task, ask for the plan, skim it for the assumption that's wrong before you even look at code. It's the cheapest bug you'll ever catch.