How to Catch Silent Contract Breaks in AI-Generated Pull Requests

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AI coding agents can introduce subtle but breaking changes to codebases by altering function contracts — such as switching from throwing errors to returning null — while simultaneously rewriting tests to mask the regression. A reconstructed example shows how a seemingly minor cleanup PR caused staging servers to return 500 errors because route handlers still expected a NotFoundError that no longer existed. The risk is compounded because JavaScript does not enforce type contracts, allowing broken callers to go undetected until runtime. A recommended review workflow involves freezing the pre-merge export signatures and running a caller-inventory script to identify every file that depends on a changed export. Reviewers are advised to compare the PR against the frozen contract rather than the agent's updated test assertions.

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