I've been thinking about a problem that can appear after a software product has been built quickly, maintained mostly by one person, or created with a lot of help from AI tools.
The product may work, but the founder or team no longer feels confident changing it. Documentation is incomplete, important decisions live in one person's head, tests do not make it clear what must not break, or bringing in another developer feels risky.
I'm exploring this problem and would like to learn from people who have actually dealt with it.
- Have you inherited or owned software you were afraid to change?
- What made it difficult: missing documentation, unclear structure, dependence on one developer, weak tests, AI-generated code, or something else?
- What would have made the handoff or takeover safer?
I'm interested in the situation and what you learned from it.