Agent Distraction

The post reports that 13% of agent file-reading sessions expose the agent to inline TODO(bug/...) or FIXME(bug/...) references, and in 6% of encounters the agent takes follow-up action on that bug ID, 83% of which are unprompted by the developer. Cross-referencing these detours against live bug status, it finds 41% chase already-closed or obsolete tickets while 57% involve still-open bugs where the agent expanded scope, and a fixed-effects regression shows unprompted bug detours add 70% more steps, 77% more tokens and 105% more wait time per session. The authors built agents that scan codebases and remove confirmed-obsolete bug references, reporting thousands removed over six months with over 95% acceptance from human reviewers.