A couple of months ago, I started experimenting with using Gemini as a pull request reviewer in our primary frontend repository. It cannot approve pull requests on its own, but it provides suggestions and considerations for developers to act on.

The initial feedback from the team was overwhelmingly positive. Our frontend developers found the comments helpful and relevant, and after reviewing some of them myself, I decided to take the next step: enabling Gemini by default across all pull requests in all repositories.

Where the Magic Happened

This is when things got interesting.

As part of our yearly security obligations, we undergo external penetration testing. One of the findings this year pointed out that our OneTimePassword generator used the default Random class in C#, which is not cryptographically secure. The fix was simple, switch to a secure random generator.

The last few months have completely reshaped how I think about building software.

From Curiosity to Productivity

It started with small experiments in Visual Studio Code using agent mode. At first, I saw it as a fun way to automate routine coding tasks. But once I learned how to write effective prompts and create detailed playbooks, things started to change. The results got a whole lot more interesting.

Discovering Better Tools

That led me to Cursor. Their AI integration felt smoother and more intuitive than what I had seen in VS Code. My productivity improved. Not dramatically, but noticeably. Then came a downside: a rogue background agent ignored spending limits and racked up over $300 in a single night. Not ideal.