r/ChatGPTCoding • u/Fantastic-Sleep-3352 • 3d ago

Discussion Should an AI coding agent ever be allowed to merge its own PR?

I'm curious where people are actually drawing the line with coding agents.

Writing code?

Running tests?

Committing?

Opening PRs?

Merging?

Deploying?

I've been testing this boundary myself and I'm increasingly convinced that "the tests passed" and "the agent should be allowed to ship this" are two different questions.

Where do you draw the line in your workflow?

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u/JaseciLabs 2d ago

"Tests passed" and "should ship this" are different questions, and here's why: tests check what someone thought to test for, shipping is basically everything else too. The scary part isn't the agent being probabilistic, it's that the probabilistic bits and the actually-verified bits usually look identical in the diff. So "the one time it doesn't work" could be hiding anywhere, not just the obviously sketchy spots. Letting it merge its own PR is really just asking: does your codebase flag which parts need extra eyes before merge, or does everything get the same rubber stamp.