The agent chart can go up while delivery stalls.

Video caption

The agent chart can go up while delivery stalls.

Unreviewed changes consume attention and rebase time.

Pre-approve policy where the answer is stable.

Track acceptance rate and queue age together.

#EricFieldNotes

Full written post / accessibility read

A manager adds coding agents and sees a beautiful rising count of patches. The customer sees no faster release if architecture, product and quality decisions still wait in the same human queue. Plot both lines before celebrating the first one.

Each unaccepted patch carries assumptions. When ten patches depend on the same unresolved product decision, the owner cannot simply stamp them one at a time. The assumptions may conflict, and the queue becomes a new source of coordination work.

For a bounded API change, encode architecture rules, protected tests and a definition of accepted evidence. Agents can then finish without waiting for a case-by-case owner ruling. Escalate only when the task changes a real product or risk decision.

Add agent capacity only when the accepted-change line moves and review age stays controlled. Do this because a rising draft curve with a flat release curve is evidence that the bottleneck moved, not that the business got faster.

#EricFieldNotes

Four-beat scene transcript

1. The agent chart can go up while delivery stalls.

A manager adds coding agents and sees a beautiful rising count of patches. The customer sees no faster release if architecture, product and quality decisions still wait in the same human queue. Plot both lines before celebrating the first one.

Visual: Generated work is not accepted work.

2. The gap becomes stale inventory.

Each unaccepted patch carries assumptions. When ten patches depend on the same unresolved product decision, the owner cannot simply stamp them one at a time. The assumptions may conflict, and the queue becomes a new source of coordination work.

Visual: Unreviewed changes consume attention and rebase time.

3. Separate repeatable from novel judgment.

For a bounded API change, encode architecture rules, protected tests and a definition of accepted evidence. Agents can then finish without waiting for a case-by-case owner ruling. Escalate only when the task changes a real product or risk decision.

Visual: Pre-approve policy where the answer is stable.

4. Graph the release, not the prompt.

Add agent capacity only when the accepted-change line moves and review age stays controlled. Do this because a rising draft curve with a flat release curve is evidence that the bottleneck moved, not that the business got faster.

Visual: Track acceptance rate and queue age together.

Research and claim limits

• METR randomized trial (S20)
• METR 2026 productivity experiment update (S93)

The examples identified as illustrative or simulated are design probes, not reported incidents. Vendor specifications do not establish workload performance.