Google links agent bug detours to 105% more wait time

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A TODO pointing at a bug can pull a coding agent away from your request. Google's engineering study associates these unprompted detours with 105% more wait time, after controlling for task and developer factors.

Here's what Google found:

• Detours were associated with 70% more steps and 77% more tokens per session, alongside the longer wait.
• Closed or otherwise dead-end tickets accounted for 41% of unprompted detours. Another 57% involved open bugs outside the developer's request.
• Cleanup agents inspected bug, file, and code-change history before proposing removals. The work removed thousands of obsolete references over six months, with more than 95% human-review acceptance.
• Google recommends presubmit analyzers, corpus scanners, and automated agents to catch and remove obsolete TODOs.

One catch: The measured effects are associations tied specifically to inline TODO(bug/...) and FIXME(bug/...) references.

Sources: developers.googleblog.com