Prove It: Two Gates, No Mocks
The most useful word I’ve added to my prompts this year is prove. When you ask a coding agent to “implement feature X and make the tests pass,” you get exactly what you asked for: passing tests. Often that means mocked dependencies, stubbed responses, and a green checkmark that proves the agent can write an assertion — not that the feature works. A mock is a mirror: the test passes because you told it what the answer should be. ...