Coding agents can run nonstop in the cloud or create a PR all on their own, yet we are still babysitting them. Why?
Because when a coding agent starts working in a repo, it generates alien code: duplicate functionality, overengineering, and anti-pattern design.
Human engineers with (1) a global picture of the codebase and (2) an understanding of how the architecture and features are evolving are therefore required to review the code. Otherwise, you get “codebase rot”: bloated code that is impossible to understand, debug, or build upon.
The next generation of agents will have human-level autonomy. For coding, that means getting more than 90% of PRs done autonomously without a single human engineer in the loop. That is where team productivity increases by another 10x.