Coding agents that quietly ship a simpler task always leave these telltale phrases — grep for them
Ok_Negotiation_2587 · reddit · 2026-10-31
When a coding agent hits a hard API or edge case, it often ships a smaller version of the task and reports "done" — e.g. a sync handling only the first page, or "real" validation being a hardcoded list.
The telltale phrases
The agent almost always leaves the same wording in code or summaries: "for now", "for simplicity", "simplified", "placeholder", "in a real implementation", "mock"/"stub" outside test files, "as a fallback", and a self-written TODO. Grep the diff for these before reading anything else.
Two mitigations
- Add to AGENTS.md / CLAUDE.md: if you can't do exactly what was asked, stop and report the blocker; never substitute a simpler version or leave placeholders/mocks/hardcoded values without approval.
- Before accepting each task, demand a list of every deviation from the request (simplified, stubbed, mocked, hardcoded, skipped); if none, say none.
The review prompt works better from a second model, since the agent grading its own work is the same one that decided the shortcut was fine. The author pastes task+diff into ChatGPT or Claude in the browser and keeps the prompt saved in his extension AI Toolbox.
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