Agentic Code Review
TLDR
Coding agents now produce code faster than humans can review it, shifting the engineering bottleneck from writing to verification. A Faros study of 22,000 developers found that while AI adoption increased code output fourfold, actual delivered value rose only about 10%, with code churn up 861%, incident ratios up 243%, and unreviewed merges up 31%. Teams must redesign review processes around the problem of reconstructing missing agent reasoning rather than checking human intent, with the appropriate approach depending heavily on project blast radius, codebase lifespan, and team size.
Why it matters
Coding agents are good and getting better fast, with code review emerging as the most leveraged skill in software development. The hard heart of engineering has moved from writing code to deciding whether to trust it.
