Unfortunately even formal specifications have this problem. Nothing can replace thinking. But sycophancy, I agree, is a problem. These tools are designed to be pleasing, to generate plausible output; but they cannot think critically about the tasks they're given.
Nothing will save you from a bad specification. And there's no royal road to knowing how to write good ones.
Right, there’s no silver bullet. I think all I can do is increase the feedback bandwidth between my brain and the real world. Regular old stuff like linters, static typing, borrow checkers, e2e tests… all the way to “talking to customers more”
Nothing will save you from a bad specification. And there's no royal road to knowing how to write good ones.