JSON Key Order Bug Caused Flaky CI Tests, Not AI Model Drift

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A developer investigated a flaky integration test that passed locally but repeatedly failed in CI due to mismatched JSON key ordering in API responses. The root cause was a server function that iterated over a Python set to build a dictionary, since sets do not guarantee insertion order, causing key sequences to vary across processes. The test itself worsened the problem by comparing raw response text instead of parsed JSON structure, making any harmless reordering a hard failure. The fix involved two changes: replacing the set iteration with ordered field traversal, and rewriting the assertion to compare parsed, key-sorted dictionaries rather than raw strings. The case highlights that brittle string-based assertions on serialization details — not AI-generated code per se — are a common source of environment-sensitive test failures.

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