There is no substitute for reading the code in many many cases. I spend more than 3k/mo on tokens. I find incorrect assumptions baked into the code (the ultimate spec) and missed by the agents and tests daily. This is more pronounced in data analysis and complex systems.

As a side effect having to read the code at least once inevitably makes it way shorter and usually much better.

That's right. And you have to read what the agent is doing as well. Once I said (Opus 5.5), given this list, find issues that are both critical and related to {X feature}.

Guess what: because I said "both", Opus decided I was looking to pick out exactly two of the issues. If I hadn't read that reasoning log, I would've remained oblivious and thought there were only two it could find.

> I spend more than 3k/mo on tokens.

I'd be curious to learn how you're using them.