Agent pull requests are everywhere. Here’s how to review them.

You’ve probably already approved one without realizing it. The tests passed. The code was clean. You merged it. But it was agent-generated—and that ease of approval is exactly the problem. A January 2026 study, “More Code, Less Reuse”, found that agent-generated code introduces more redundancy and more technical debt per change than human-written code. The surface looks clean. The debt is quiet. And reviewers, according to the same research, actually feel better about approving it. This isn’t an argument to slow down. It’s an argument to be intentional. There’s a difference.