The first time I used a coding agent, I was mesmerized. Before the agent, I was copy/pasting between my IDE and an AI chat interface. It was amazing to see an agent edit files directly and fix its own errors in real time. After a few days, the honeymoon wore off as I encountered frequent bugs. The agent would stop responding entirely until I restarted it. Development workflows felt stiflingly primitive, and the agent would often declare tasks finished when work had barely begun.