Using AI in a Live Coding Interview

Confirm permission before using live assistance. Ask whether the interview allows AI suggestions, transcription, generated code or only ordinary documentation. Permission to consult documentation does not establish permission to use an AI assistant, and permission during preparation does not extend automatically to the assessment.

Also establish what information you may share with an assistant, especially unpublished prompts or employer code. If the instructions are silent, ask the organizer before the round. If outside assistance is prohibited, complete the assessment without it.

When AI is permitted, agree how you should acknowledge its use. Be prepared to explain which suggestions you adopted, why they fit the constraints and what you changed after testing.

For preparation before the round, use mock interview practice to rehearse explaining your decisions aloud.

Following a spoken problem while explaining and coding can strain your attention. The checks below help you evaluate AI suggestions systematically, from clarifying constraints to tracing code and testing assumptions.

• Restate the problem: Identify input size, allowed values, required output and whether the input can be modified. Confirm missing constraints with the interviewer rather than accepting assumptions supplied by AI.
• Compare approaches: Request a simple baseline and an alternative, with the condition that makes each correct. For example, binary search needs an ordered search space or a monotonic decision condition.
• Trace the implementation: Follow variable updates, loop boundaries and return conditions on a small example. Check that the code preserves the reasoning you explained.
• Choose meaningful tests: Consider empty input, a single element, duplicates, negative values and boundary values when the input contract permits them. State the expected result before running each test.
• Verify complexity: Define the input size and count the dominant operations. Include sorting, copied collections, recursion depth and auxiliary data structures in your analysis.

Consider a backend engineer interviewing for an L5 role at a public cloud vendor who receives a problem about the longest contiguous subarray with a target sum, allowing negative values. An AI suggestion to shrink a window whenever its sum exceeds the target fails because removing a negative value can increase the sum. The engineer rejects that rule, evaluates prefix sums with a map storing each sum's earliest index, and traces an example containing both positive and negative values.

The useful outcome is a solution you can defend. If you cannot explain why a suggestion works, investigate it before incorporating it into your answer.

Choose the surface according to where the meeting runs and which voices you need captured.

• Native desktop app: SubcueAI's flagship app for macOS and Windows captures system audio plus your microphone and presents live assistance in a floating local overlay. It works with desktop meeting clients, including Zoom and Microsoft Teams.
• Browser extension: The Side Panel provides live in-interview assistance on Chrome and Edge for calls running in a browser tab, such as Google Meet. It captures only the meeting tab's audio, covering the interviewer rather than your microphone, and does not transcribe the candidate.

The Firefox extension build supports mock practice only. Neither live surface joins the call as a meeting bot, and neither injects a content script into the meeting page.

Audio capture alone does not provide a prompt displayed only in an editor, starter code or test output. Check what context the assistant actually has before relying on its suggestions, especially when the interviewer points at code without describing it aloud.

Use the setup tutorial to configure the appropriate surface for your call.

A local overlay or browser Side Panel can appear in a shared or recorded view. Visibility depends on what the capture includes; choosing a particular tab or window does not establish a universal guarantee that assistance stays hidden.

Screen sharing, screen recording, proctored assessments and company-managed devices are outside any visibility guarantee. Proctoring and device management can introduce monitoring or installation restrictions. Having no meeting bot and no injected content script does not bypass those controls or establish that the tool is undetectable.

If AI is allowed, review the agreed sharing and recording setup before the interview. Resolve any conflict between the required assessment environment and the assistant before the round begins.

Read the detectability and privacy guidance for the limits relevant to your interview setup.