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# Refactoring in the Age of AI


- **Date:** Friday, Jul 10, 2026
- **Time:** 10:20–10:50 (30 min)
- **Room:** Stage 11
- **Event:** World Congress 2026 Europe

## Recording

[Watch recording](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/100223-refactoring-in-the-age-of-ai)

## Description

AI coding assistants write impressive code. They also destroy carefully balanced codebases the moment you ask them to refactor.

Ask Copilot to extract a method. Watch it miss three call sites. Ask Claude to rename a class. Watch it break imports across 12 files. Ask Cline to simplify a conditional. Watch your tests fail in ways you didn't know were possible.
The problem isn't that AI is stupid. It's that refactoring requires something AI assistants don't have: state, sequences, and safety nets.

Martin Fowler wrote the refactoring playbook 25 years ago. It assumed humans would execute it. What happens when machines try?

This talk explores the collision between classical refactoring wisdom and modern AI capabilities. We'll dissect why AI assistants fail at refactoring, demonstrate patterns that actually work, and show how to build workflow layers that make AI-assisted refactoring safe and predictable.

## Speakers

### [Dominik Srednicki](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/@dominik-srednicki)

Principal Architect at SAP
### [Elena Lucarelli](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/@elena-lucarelli)

Principal AI DevX Lead at SAP Signavio


## Related talks at this congress

- [Building the next generation of AI developer tools](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1074-building-the-next) — Krzysztof Cieślak
- [Confessions of a Software Archaeologist: What I Did Wrong in 10 Years of Restructuring Software](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1270-confessions-of-a) — Hendrik Lösch
- [Maintainable and Testable Code in the Age of AI](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1458-maintainable-and) — Dennis Doomen
- [Pair Programming with Generative Agents: Refactoring Legacy Android at Speed](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1255-pair-programming) — Ahmed Tikiwa