From Chrome DevTools to AI Engineering, with Addy Osmani
Source
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com
Author
Gergely Orosz
Date
Context
Delegating code generation still leaves someone responsible for understanding consequential decisions. In a Pragmatic Engineer interview, former Google engineering director Addy Osmani describes, in the newsletter's summary, a risk of losing comprehension of the work, because reading everything an AI agentAn AI system that doesn't just answer once but works toward a goal in a loop — taking actions, reading the results, and deciding what to do next.Full definition → produces is no longer practical.
His proposed workflow asks agents to record decisions and lessons, while the engineer reviews and learns from the important ones. This preserves a basis for accepting or rejecting changes even when the engineer did not write them. It is an approach to maintaining ownership, rather than a measured claim about productivity or future employment.
Terms in this piece · Glossary
AI agent — An AI system that doesn't just answer once but works toward a goal in a loop — taking actions, reading the results, and deciding what to do next.
