How to Review Agent-Written PRs: Break the Code on Purpose and See If Tests Fail
ITower__Education · reddit · 2026-10-12
The poster shares practical tactics for reviewing agent-generated PRs, where the danger is everything looks finished — green tests, confident descriptions, easy to merge. Three tips: (1) ignore diff size and ask what the change can break — a tiny auth change deserves more scrutiny than a big UI refactor; (2) compare against the original request, not the PR description — the feature worked but a stated requirement was silently missing; (3) since agents write their own tests, deliberately break the code and check tests actually fail — surprisingly often they don't. Asks how others split full vs. risk-based review.
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