--- title: Move code review before the code | daily.dev description: Traditional code review, anchored at the pull request stage, is no longer fit for purpose in an era where AI agents can generate a feature's worth of code in... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/move-code-review-before-the-code-76hleyt9g twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Move code review before the code | daily.dev og:description: Traditional code review, anchored at the pull request stage, is no longer fit for purpose in an era where AI agents can generate a feature's worth of code in... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/move-code-review-before-the-code-76hleyt9g og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/76hlEYt9G.png og:image:alt: Move code review before the code og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Move code review before the code **[The New Stack](https://daily.dev/sources/newstack)** · 7 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Traditional code review, anchored at the pull request stage, is no longer fit for purpose in an era where AI agents can generate a feature's worth of code in an afternoon. The argument here is that review should shift upstream to the moment a developer expresses intent — capturing scope, acceptance criteria, and constraints before code is written. Rather than reading hundreds of lines of diff, senior engineers review 10 lines of intent and ask whether the right problem is being solved with the right constraints. Automated verification (running real traffic, UI interactions) handles correctness checks, while human judgment focuses on knowledge-sharing and architectural decisions. Teams can also mine past review comments to build an 'AI slop register' of codified invariants, so recurring mistakes are caught automatically without ever needing a human comment again. The transition is cultural and gradual — it cannot be mandated top-down but must be demonstrated in practice. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Code Reviews in the Age of AI](https://daily.dev/posts/code-reviews-in-the-age-of-ai-acvy63drb) · Earthly · 1 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#ai-agents](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-agents), [#code-review](https://daily.dev/tags/code-review) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/move-code-review-before-the-code-76hleyt9g) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Move code review before the code","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/move-code-review-before-the-code-76hleyt9g","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/move-code-review-before-the-code-76hleyt9g"},"datePublished":"2026-07-19T14:02:47.895Z","dateModified":"2026-07-22T08:20:54.082Z","description":"Traditional code review, anchored at the pull request stage, is no longer fit for purpose in an era where AI agents can generate a feature's worth of code in...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/c76a71471578cde1d997e41eea3cef1c?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/c76a71471578cde1d997e41eea3cef1c?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"The New Stack","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"The New Stack","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/newstack","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/newstack"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/move-code-review-before-the-code-76hleyt9g","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"ai-agents,code-review","timeRequired":"PT7M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The New Stack","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/newstack"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Move code review before the code"}]} ```