Marketing shows agents rewriting entire apps. In PHP land, wins are smaller: new endpoint, new ACF field group, new template partial, new WP-CLI seeder.
Task sizing that works
- Add Rank Math meta to a seeder function
- Create a
template-parts/component matching existing CSS - Write a migration script with idempotent checks
Task sizing that fails
- “Modernise entire Yii2 admin”
- “Replace Woo checkout in one shot”
Legacy guardrails
- Point agent at one directory
- Paste coding standards from
.cursor/rules - Require PHPUnit or manual test notes in PR