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Ask HN: In post AI world, who is responsible if the code break?

In a post-AI development world, developers remain responsible for code they commit, even if generated by AI, according to an Ask HN discussion. The original poster notes that their commits still carry their name and they are expected to debug issues, while reviewers are rarely held accountable for stamping buggy code. The discussion raises the question of responsibility when coding agents like Claude are the top contributors to a repository, suggesting the reviewer may bear responsibility.

read1 min views1 publishedAug 4, 2026

Even in pre-AI world, there were no testers around me for the past many years, and those people who actually tested the final product before the release (their titles were probably something like "release engineer", not "Tester" or "QA") would file a bug if a problem is found, but they were never responsible for the bug I introduced. The commits had my name on them, and people would come to me with questions. If I could not answer the question because I forgot the code, I would sit down and figure out.

Now with AI, at least after a ~year of using AI for development, things haven't changed in terms of responsibility: my commits still have my name on them, and people will come to me with questions. If I cannot answer the question because I forgot the code or never wrote it in the first place, I will sit down and figure out.

As for the reviewer, I never saw anyone being grilled for stamping buggy code. People make mistakes all the time, including when reviewing someone's code. Code reviews are nice to have and catch real issues, but it's naive to think that they could protect from code breakage, regardless if it's post-AI or not.

Makes sense, but since companies are using coding agents more. Like if you see some repos the top contributor is claude. Since PRs are being made by agents, if you do a git blame claude is the one responsible for the change. In that case who's responsible? Reviewer?

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