I can’t agree more. I’m torn on LLM code reviews. On the one hand I think it is a place that makes a lot of sense and they can quickly catch silly human errors like misspelled variables and whatnot.
On the other hand the amount of flip flopping they go through is unreal. I’ve witnessed numerous instances where either the cursor bugbot or Claude has found a bug and recommended a reasonable fix. The fix has been implemented and then the LLM has argued the case against the fix and requested the code be reverted. Out of curiosity to see what happens I’ve reverted the code just to be told the exact same recommendation as in the first pass.
I can foresee this becoming a circus for less experienced devs so I turned off the auto code reviews and stuck them in request only mode with a GH action so that I can retain some semblance of sanity and prevent the pr comment history from becoming cluttered with overly verbose comments from an agent.
The purpose of these reviewers is to flag the bug to you. You still need to read the code around and see if its valid and serious and worth a fix. Why does it matter if it then says the opposite after the fix? Did it even happen often or is this just an anecdote of a one time thing?
It’s like a linter with conflicting rules (can’t use tabs, rewrite to spaces; can’t use spaces, rewrite to tabs). Something that runs itself in circles and can also block a change unless the comment is resolved simply adds noise, and a bot that contradicts itself does not add confidence to a change.
On the other hand the amount of flip flopping they go through is unreal. I’ve witnessed numerous instances where either the cursor bugbot or Claude has found a bug and recommended a reasonable fix. The fix has been implemented and then the LLM has argued the case against the fix and requested the code be reverted. Out of curiosity to see what happens I’ve reverted the code just to be told the exact same recommendation as in the first pass.
I can foresee this becoming a circus for less experienced devs so I turned off the auto code reviews and stuck them in request only mode with a GH action so that I can retain some semblance of sanity and prevent the pr comment history from becoming cluttered with overly verbose comments from an agent.