How I stopped AI from breaking my apps

I spent 3 hours last night watching an AI tool break my dashboard that was already working

It started with a tiny bug: user settings were not saving when the page reloaded

Instead of slowing down, I asked Claude to fix it right there inside the main dashboard file.

That was my mistake

The model went into a spiral. It changed my state logic, broke the top navigation, wiped out my CSS styling, and threw 4 new error screens in my face

A 2-minute fix turned into me spending midnight hitting undo and throwing away code just to get the screen to open again.

I stopped doing this completely after making 1 hard rule:

Never let an AI edit your live pages when debugging tricky logic.

Now, whenever an AI tool fails on the first prompt, I run the test-page gauntlet:

Spin up a blank /test page: I tell cursor or lovable to leave the main app alone and create an empty route at /test. My working pages stay untouched
Put 3 simple checks on the screen: I have the model print 3 pass/fail boxes right in the browser: Box 1 checks the login token, Box 2 prints the exact JSON payload being sent, and Box 3 shows the server reply
Spot the exact red box: I loaded /test and Box 2 lit up red immediately. A field name was spelled wrong in the payload. Fixing it took 1 line

Once all 3 boxes turned green on /test, I copied that single clean function back into the main dashboard.

The dashboard stayed clean. Nothing broke. I did not lose any working code.

When an AI breaks something in your project, do you let it keep thrashing in place, or do you move the bug to a blank page?

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How I stopped AI from breaking my apps