AI coding tools are becoming part of everyday software development. They can generate API routes, database queries, validation logic, repository classes, test cases, and even Dockerfiles in seconds. That speed is useful, but it also creates a new kind of risk. The generated code may look correct, pass a few mocked tests, and still fail when it meets a real database, a real cache, a real message queue, or a real browser workflow. This is where many teams start feeling the weakness of mock-heavy testing. Mocks are fast, but they often test our assumptions instead of the actual behavior of the system. A mocked PostgreSQL client will return exactly what we tell it to return. It will not surprise us with a unique constraint violation, a transaction rollback issue, a timestamp behavior difference, a case-sensitive query problem, or a connection pooling edge case. Real systems behave with more friction, and good integration tests should include some of that friction.…