Every studio says it uses AI. Fewer can tell you where in the pipeline it earns its place, and where it quietly makes things worse. After a year of shipping agent-assisted work, the map is clearer than the hype suggests.
Where agents actually help
The wins cluster around the mechanical middle of delivery — the parts that are well specified but tedious. Agents are reliable when the acceptance criteria are unambiguous and the blast radius is small.
- Scaffolding and repetitive migration edits across many files
- First-pass test coverage on pure functions
- Turning a well-written ticket into a reviewable draft PR
Where a human still ships it
Judgment does not delegate. Anything touching data models, authentication, or a customer account goes through a person, and we keep the review window short so mistakes surface fast.
The question was never can it write the code. It is can it be trusted to stop.
What this means for your roadmap
Expect faster drafts, not fewer reviews. The teams getting real value treat an agent as a tireless junior — quick, literal, and in need of a clear stopping line. Put the guardrails in the process, not the prompt.
