The Agent Is Not the Point

A developer who built a minimal coding agent from scratch in Rust (four tools: read, write, edit, run shell) shares what the experience revealed about the real value of AI in software engineering. The core argument: the agent itself is not the point — what matters is how it helps humans gain clarity on problems. The author critiques both the 'AI will replace all coders' camp and the 'AI is fundamentally harmful' camp as emotional overreactions. The real opportunity is using LLMs to reduce the cost of evidence-gathering and context-building, so human judgment can be applied more effectively. The post also predicts that the future of agents looks more like composable libraries than monolithic products.