[2606.13175] The End of Code Review: Coding Agents Supersede Human Inspection

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Computer Science > Software Engineering

arXiv:2606.13175 (cs)

[Submitted on 11 Jun 2026]

Title:The End of Code Review: Coding Agents Supersede Human Inspection

Authors:Martin Monperrus<br>View a PDF of the paper titled The End of Code Review: Coding Agents Supersede Human Inspection, by Martin Monperrus

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Abstract:Code review has been the primary quality gate in software development since Fagan formalised code inspection in 1976. For five decades, having a human examine and comment on a colleague's changes before merge has been a cornerstone practice at organisations of every size. Coding agents are large language model (LLM)-based autonomous systems capable of reading, writing, testing, and repairing software. We argue that coding agents have crossed a threshold of capability at which traditional human code review is no longer a necessary component of a software quality pipeline. Our argument rests on two claims: every stated goal of code review can be served by agents at lower cost and higher throughput; the naive integration in which agents write code and humans remain the mandatory reviewers is a dead end because it neither provides meaningful assurance nor scales with AI-assisted throughput.

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Software Engineering (cs.SE)

Cite as:<br>arXiv:2606.13175 [cs.SE]

(or<br>arXiv:2606.13175v1 [cs.SE] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.13175

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arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

Submission history<br>From: Martin Monperrus [view email]<br>[v1]<br>Thu, 11 Jun 2026 10:43:48 UTC (62 KB)

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