Tell your agents to CARE about the codebase

YouTube · Watch/Read · (gathered 2026-10-14)

• AI agents are proficient at tactical programming (solving immediate problems) but struggle with strategic programming (long-term codebase health, refactoring, architectural improvements) because their training and benchmarks primarily incentivize short-term, problem-solving behaviors.
• Strategic programming involves taking the “long view” and acting as “the general winning the war” for the codebase, a role agents are not naturally incentivized to play, akin to an “annoying dev” suggesting refactors.
• To achieve strategic improvements, you must explicitly tell agents that you care about the strategic layer and codebase improvement; once directed, agents are surprisingly effective at executing tasks like module deepening and improving test coverage.