> Before agents, it was easier to believe that the ceremony of trading comments on snapshots was an effective way to collaborate on software,

I’m highly skeptical of this claim. For any complicated feature, there’s always a design doc (or an RFC, or a wireframe) and that’s what people used for discussion. Discussion in a PR are mostly about whether to accept the code, reject the feature, or provide feedback about alternate implementations. It’s not for pair programming or directing design.

Collaborating together in a research lab (brainstorm session) is not the same as asking feedback for a journal article (PR). What is described in the article is pair programming with extra steps.