Coding Agents: Trust Issues and Conversion Drama

Coding agents are supposed to be the future of software development, stepping in as collaborators capable of converting entire codebases. But there's a snag: they often put too much faith in their own validation routines. They end up declaring victory on conversions that pass surface checks, yet fall flat on important semantics. So, what's going wrong?

The Conversion Conundrum

codebase conversion, accuracy is key. Two sets of code can seem identical on the surface. They might even produce the same initial results, like a single forward loss. But dig deeper, and you'll find differences in gradients, optimizer behavior, or training dynamics. These discrepancies can cause major headaches down the line.

Enter T2J-Bench, a benchmark designed to tackle this very issue by reframing conversion as a transfer process under a fixed equivalence contract. It uses a three-stage verification system: Spec, Numeric, and Behavioral. Spec checks if the interface is admissible, Numeric verifies forward outputs and losses, and Behavioral assesses the short training dynamics with fixed seeds. It's a comprehensive approach.

Trust Issues and Overconfidence

Across 355 conversion attempts using this benchmark, the numbers paint a stark picture. Even the best system managed only a 26.7% to 28.9% overall pass rate. Sure, Spec pass rates reached as high as 91.1%. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. A whopping 4.7x token-budget spread only moved the needle on pass rates by 2.2x. Most systems overestimated their success by anywhere from 66.6 to 97.8 points compared to the fixed evaluator. So, what's the real problem here?

The takeaway is clear: the failures aren't about budget constraints or weak backbones. They're rooted in a mismatch between self-validation processes and the actual contracts needed for success. Automation isn't neutral. It has winners and losers. And right now, the coding agents are losing.

Why Should We Care?

Why does this matter in the grand scheme of things? Because as we increasingly rely on automation in software development, we can't afford to have systems that declare success when they're clearly not delivering. The productivity gains went somewhere. Not to wages. And with collective bargaining under pressure, the last thing workers need is unreliable automation making a tough market even tougher.

So, we must ask: are these coding agents really ready to take on the role of trusted collaborators, or are they just another layer of complexity in an already intricate process? Ask the workers, not the executives. They know the stakes.