Can you share your list?

I am curious what does it contain, for me a lot of times its a back and forth with agent until it "looks good to my eyes and taste", but haven't written any such list yet, because it is context dependant, in some projects I forgive minor issues, or allow magical numbers, but in other projects I force agent to use constants with meaningful names `SECONDS_IN_A_DAY = 24 * 60 * 60`

It is interesting that the output of code is associated with sight and taste, while the quality of the code itself is associated with smell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_smell

*edit: that wikipedia page ^ itself is a pretty answer to your request for a list of things to avoid when writing maintainable code.

I've codified mine into a reusable workflow https://github.com/nothingnesses/agent-scaffold . To be honest, this isn't fool-proof though, since the agents can simply choose to ignore them, so I also like to pair this with deterministic linting and compile time checking.

For a Rust project, I created macros that output compiler errors when documentation and tests are not in a shape I want them to be, like missing function invocations or assertions, which forces the agent to address them, where otherwise they would've just worked around them by adding stupid trivial assertions like `assert_eq!(true, true)`.

That still isn't fool-proof either, but it helps minimise those instances. I'm bullish on the idea of integrating formal methods and model-checking with AI. I think that combo feels like a promising avenue for constraining the stochastic side of AI-generated code with something closer to deterministic verification. Provided you can write correct specs of course!