# From Syntax Checker to Critical Reviewer: How We Convinced AI to Catch Real API Quality Issues

DevFeed: [From Syntax Checker to Critical Reviewer: How We Convinced AI to Catch Real API Quality Issues](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/from-syntax-checker-to-critical-reviewer-how-we-convinced-ai-to-catch-real-api-quality-issues-22633.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://www.wix.engineering/post/from-syntax-checker-to-critical-reviewer-how-we-forced-ai-to-catch-real-api-quality-issues>)

Author: Wix Engineering

Published: 2026-01-07T10:09:21Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Wix Engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/wix-engineering.md>)

Topics: [API](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/api.md>), [Artificial Intelligence](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ai.md>), [Developer experience](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/developer-experience.md>), [Usability](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/usability.md>)

Tags: [ai](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai.md>), [api](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/api.md>), [api-design](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/api-design.md>), [developer-experience](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/developer-experience.md>), [mental-models](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/mental-models.md>), [technical](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/technical.md>), [usability](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/usability.md>)

## AI overview

The article examines how an AI tool reviewing API designs focused on measurable issues such as naming, formatting, and typos while missing developer-experience problems involving workflows, hidden rules, mental models, and usability. It describes this as a recurring bias and explains how the tool was adjusted to produce more critical reviews.

## Source excerpt

Building an AI tool to review API design taught us something fundamental about how AI approaches quality: it confidently optimizes for the least important parts. Instead of flagging the quality issues that actually hurt developers, like confusing workflows, hidden rules, or inconsistent mental models, it focused on the safe, measurable stuff: naming patterns, formatting mistakes, even typos. Developer experience issues just didn't get caught, even though in our case, we specifically asked for...