Review the code that does not exist yet

Short summary

With AI generating large diffs quickly, code review's bottleneck has shifted from authoring to reviewing. The author argues effective review starts by understanding intent and evaluating architectural trade-offs rather than nitpicking every line—because the review serves future maintainers, not just current approval.

• •Code review bottleneck has shifted from authors to reviewers due to AI-accelerated code generation
• •Effective review prioritizes intent and design trade-offs over formatting and style rules
• •Review methodology: intent → solution approach → trade-offs → improvement check → confidence → detailed line-by-line review

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.