By Sohit Kumar. Originally published at Prinevo.ai.
How much work will the next engineer need to change it?
Keep agent-written code maintainable by giving the agent the existing design and domain rules, checking whether it reuses the right boundaries, and retaining the reason for important decisions. Review how the code fits the system alongside whether the feature works. A passing test does not tell us how easy the next change will be.
Illustrative notification path. Keep provider-specific behavior behind a boundary with the right responsibility.
I think software design becomes more important when agents can add code quickly. Someone still has to understand and maintain what gets added.
A small feature can create another path to maintain
Years ago, I wrote code with third-party calls scattered across different classes. During review, my senior brought those calls into one class with methods for the integration. That was one of the ways I learned about single responsibility and cohesion.
That experience predates coding agents. The same design question applies to their work.
Consider an illustrative task. An agent needs to send an invoice reminder from a background job. The application already has a notification client that manages provider credentials, error handling and delivery logs.
The agent adds a direct provider call inside the new job. Its tests confirm that the reminder is sent.
The feature works, but now the application has another integration path. When the provider changes how it accepts requests, someone has to find and update both paths. The new job may also behave differently when delivery fails.
Before accepting the change, I would ask why the existing notification client was not used. Did the agent fail to find it? Was its purpose unclear? Or does the job have a requirement that the existing client cannot support?
Those answers lead to different changes. Reuse the client when it owns the right responsibility. Extend it when that fits the design. If a separate path is needed, make the reason explicit.
Give the agent enough context to find the existing design
An instruction to “keep the code clean” leaves a lot open.
For the reminder task, show the agent where notifications are sent today, which module owns the provider integration and which decisions constrain its use. Ask it to inspect that path before proposing another one.
This is part of what I mean by retrieval debt. If the relevant behavior is scattered or hard to identify, the next reader has more work to do. That reader may be a human or another agent.
But reuse also needs judgment. Similar-looking code can belong to different business rules. A billing notification and a marketing campaign may have different consent, timing and failure requirements. Forcing them through one abstraction can make both harder to change.
The goal is a clear responsibility for each part, with understandable interactions between them.
Review the shape of the change
For the reminder example, I would want the reviewer to understand a few things.
Where does provider-specific behavior live?
Does the job use that boundary, or introduce another one?
Are errors and logs handled in a way the owning team can support?
If delivery behavior changes, where should the next engineer make that change?
A review agent can help surface these questions. The accountable engineer still needs to decide whether the proposed design belongs in the system.
Keep tests focused on the behavior and important boundaries. If testing one reminder requires constructing half the application, investigate the coupling. That can be a design signal, although test infrastructure can cause difficulty too.
The change impact guide covers the related question of what a change could affect and which checks it needs.
Leave the next engineer the reason
A useful handoff should explain why the integration lives where it does, which rule it follows and who owns it. Keep that close to the code or in the relevant decision record, where the next person can find it.
If review catches a repeated problem, improve the setup. Make the existing module easier to find, clarify its responsibility or update the relevant skill. The review-feedback article explains how that correction can reach later runs.
Then look at a follow-up change. Can an engineer find the right place, understand the decision and make the change without reconstructing the original agent conversation?
That is a useful question to bring to a real-change evaluation. Inspect what the agent delivered, and also what your team will inherit.
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