people are lying about agentic coding

Summary

Louis Fei argues that the industry’s hype around “agentic coding” is misleading. While AI coding tools can sometimes work astonishingly well with vague requests, failures are not simply a “skill issue.” Instead, the real limiter is that building reliable agentic workflows still requires significant domain expertise and careful system architecture—including:

• pipelines
• verification loops
• rigid feedback mechanisms

This is because real-world software is complex and full of decisions that can’t be abstracted away.

Fei describes a common pattern where developers who try these approaches and get poor results are told they’re doing it wrong—such as:

• “holding it wrong”
• needing more tokens
• choosing the right model
• not setting up the pipeline correctly

He says this can feel like gaslighting, because agentic coding doesn’t remove the need to understand the codebase and maintain strong engineering judgment. He also notes that although some people have built impressive automated pipelines, it’s still uncertain whether fully autonomous “software factories” are the right long-term direction.

Fei’s recommendation

Rather than fully autonomous development, Fei recommends a pragmatic approach: treat AI as a delegation layer (or “ship’s computer”) that can handle small tasks or parts of the stack, while developers stay close to the work.

He emphasizes that coding—including typing and exploring code structure—helps developers clarify what needs to be built and deepens domain expertise through friction.

Fei aligns this view with Addy Osmani, who, despite embracing AI coding/agentic workflows, advocates staying close to the code, working in small chunks, and recognizing that expertise comes from hands-on engagement.

Conclusion: “choose your own level”

Fei concludes that the best path is to “choose your own level” of agentic tooling:

• integrate it where it improves quality and joy
• possibly type less without sacrificing correctness
• reject both extremes: fully autonomous software factories and a return to purely manual coding

Presenters / contributors

• Louis Fei (presenter)
• Addy Osmani (mentioned contributor/author; referenced as aligned with the speaker’s approach)