A failing test or a stack trace used to mean the same first move for most of us: read it, form a guess, open the file. With a coding agent in the terminal, there is a second option that takes a few seconds. Paste the error, let the agent read the code around it, and see what it comes back with.
Both paths have a cost. Reading it yourself is slower, but you keep the mental model of the code, and you notice when the bug is a symptom of something larger. Handing it over first is faster for the boring cases, yet the agent can fix the line that threw instead of the reason it threw, and a patch that makes the error go away is not the same as a fix.
We would like to hear what your first move looks like today:
- When a bug appears, who looks at it first, you or the agent?
- Which kinds of bugs do you never hand over, and why?
- Has an agent ever "fixed" a bug by hiding it? How did you find out?
Tell us about your own debugging routine in the comments below, including the times it went wrong.
