A spike is an early prototype that you're supposed to throw away after having figured out the real design.

I think it was subtly dissing you.

I think you are subtly dissing me :)

I was half-joking, of course I could've just asked Claude, but the linked site shows there has been actual recent spikes in the use of the word 'spike'. The term does match what I was recently doing, but hacking around legacy ERP software, blackboxes and other enterprise abominations isn't that out of the ordinary for me.