Code review bottleneck: How to replace line-by-line review

Ankit Jain argues that while line-by-line code review is becoming impractical amid growing volumes of AI-generated code, eliminating review entirely would sacrifice its more important function: building shared understanding and transferring knowledge across engineering teams. Citing research and recent industry reports, he notes that reviews have historically identified relatively few defects compared with their role in helping teams develop mental models of systems, while AI-assisted development has increased both delivery speed and instability. Jain calls AI-only diff review “review theater” because models can consistently inspect code but lack context about the decisions, intent, and trade-offs behind it. He proposes replacing diff-centered review with five layers: agents should argue over alternatives before a pull request exists, teams should capture evolving intent and acceptance criteria, repeated review comments should become automated invariants, humans should debate unresolved product and architectural decisions, and organizations should explicitly assign ownership for the rules governing code changes. The approach preserves human judgment and accountability while assigning repetitive verification and defect detection to automated tools.

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