AI should only run as fast as we can catch up

All these engineers who claim to write most code through AI - I wonder what kind of codebase that is. I keep on trying, but it always ends up producing superficially okay-looking code, but getting nuances wrong. Also fails to fix them (just changes random stuff) if pointed to said nuances.

I work on a large product with two decades of accumulated legacy, maybe that's the problem. I can see though how generating and editing a simple greenfield web frontend project could work much better, as long as actual complexity is low.

It's architecture dependent. A fairly functional modular monolith with good documentation can be accessible to LLMs at the million line scale, but a coupled monolith or poorly instrumented microservices can drive agents into the ground at 100k.

I think it's definitely an interesting subject for Verification Engineering. the easier to task AI to do work more precisely, the easier we can check their work.

Yup. Codebase structure for agents is a rabbit hole I've spent a lot of time going down. The interesting thing is that it's mostly the same structure that humans tend to prefer, with a few tweaks: agents like smaller files/functions (more precise reads/edits), strongly typed functional programming, doc-comments with examples and hyperlinks to additional context, smaller directories with semantic subgroups, long/distinct variable names, etc.