Repo Test Suites Are Unreliable Judges for AI-Generated Code Patches
A software development opinion piece argues that standard repository test suites are flawed verification tools for AI-generated code patches. Because AI models ingest existing tests as part of their prompt context, a passing CI badge only confirms the model matched known patterns, not that it preserved undocumented behaviors. The author contends that critical invariants such as idempotency, isolation, and timeout handling can silently break while the green badge remains intact. The proposed fix is an external contract probe — a standalone Python script kept outside the repository and never fed to the model — that compares behavior between baseline and patched instances. This approach ensures the verification oracle remains unseen by the AI, making test results a genuine measure of correctness rather than pattern repetition.
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