The agent principal-agent problem

The agent principal-agent problem 2026-05-07 Code review is broken. The industry-established code review process, review-then-commit, was a straightforward mechanism that allowed a relatively low-trust group of engineers to collaborate. It appears to have been initially developed for the Apache server OSS project in the 90s, corporatized by Google in the early 2000s, and popularized throughout the industry by several means, most notable of which was the GitHub PR. It was very simple: A human makes a change. This change is packaged up, sent to another human for commentary. Rounds of commentary and adjustments continue until the reviewer approves (LGTMs) it. The change is committed. This is not Michael Fagan's defect analysis work or the ticket-like processes used for critical systems changes in fields like aerospace. This will not catch your bugs. It will, however, communicate design changes to other engineers who maintain a mental model of the codebase, and reviewers can use the…