Review as the Control Point

Agarwal et al. (CMU, arXiv 2607.07980): a 26-construct/67-relationship causal theory synthesized from 3,100 coded practitioner documents — review is the control point through which a coding agent's effect on software is decided, and AI does NOT fix the sign of that effect; the team sets it through reviewer expertise, disposition, and how it adapts the review process (three moderators). Central core is review depth + reviewer skill, threaded by comprehension-debt feedback loops; the paper's own non-vendor GitHub telemetry (2.5M+ PRs) finds agent PRs reviewed less / merged several× faster / discussed less, but the trends flip direction under defensible analysis choices and the no-review rate CONVERGES toward the human baseline over time