For consequential work, the agent that creates an output should not be its only reviewer. It can run tests, check its own reasoning, and catch obvious mistakes, but those checks do not make its judgment independent. Use a separate reviewer for substantive evaluation, and increase that reviewer’s independence as the risks rise.
Why an agent should not be its own sole judge
The principle is about governance, not a claim that agents are incapable of self-checking or that every task needs an outside auditor. A creator has already made choices and judgments that may be hard to reassess impartially. In professional assurance, this is recognized as a self-review threat: IESBA’s 2026 Code of Ethics defines it as a risk that a firm may not appropriately evaluate a prior judgment or activity performed within the firm or its network.
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Environment and Climate Change Canada likewise describes self-review as a threat to objective verification. CMS guidance says assessors should not assess their own work and frames impartiality as freedom from perceived or actual conflicts tied to system development, operation, or management. These are formal assurance contexts; they support separating creation from evaluation where impartiality matters, not a blanket rule that every draft or routine task requires a human sign-off.
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Independence is not all-or-nothing. A peer review within a team can be suitable for a routine code change; a security, compliance, safety, or financial-reporting decision calls for a more independent and appropriately skilled assessment. Choose the least burdensome process that still gives the decision credible scrutiny.
#1 Best Overall
| Work and consequence | Suitable review approach | What to establish |
|---|---|---|
| Low-risk draft or reversible internal task | Agent self-checks and repeatable mechanical checks may be enough; use a second reviewer when factual accuracy or audience impact warrants it. | Whether the task is reversible, what errors matter, and which claims need verification. |
| Routine team code change | Peer review plus automated tests or linters. | Review scope, technical correctness, and whether checks pass. The UK Home Office recommends planned code-review time, constructive feedback, pull-request templates, and automation. |
| Security, compliance, safety, or formal assurance | A reviewer or assessment process separated from the creator, with expertise appropriate to the system and decision. | Independence, requirements, assessment criteria, evidence, and traceable findings. Formal IV&V is not just another name for ordinary peer review. |
NIST defines independent verification and validation (IV&V) as a comprehensive review, analysis, and testing performed by an objective third party to confirm that requirements are correctly defined and that the system implements required functionality and security requirements. That definition describes a formal assurance approach, not a requirement for every everyday code review.
Build a review workflow for agent-produced work
- Make the output reviewable. Ask the producing agent to state the task, assumptions, sources, and checks it ran. Keep those notes with the artifact or change so the reviewer can see what was intended and what evidence supports it.
- Assign a separate reviewer. Give a second agent or a qualified person a defined scope: check the output against the requirements and source material, and identify unsupported claims, missing cases, or defects. Do not treat the creator’s own approval as independent review.
- Automate repeatable checks. Run tests, static analysis, or linters for issues they can detect consistently. The UK Home Office recommends automation as part of code review; passing automated checks complements human or independent judgment rather than replacing it.
- Resolve disagreements against criteria. Ask the reviewer to explain findings with evidence. Google’s code-review guidance says technical facts and data should outweigh personal preference; where two options are equally valid, the author’s preference can be accepted. Resolve conflicts by reference to technical facts and applicable standards, and escalate if they remain unresolved.
- Record the outcome. Note what was reviewed, against which criteria, by whom or by what process, what findings were raised, and how they were resolved. This makes the decision traceable and helps prevent a check from being mistaken for a broader approval.
Keep review factual, scoped, and documented
Separate correctness from taste
A review should test the artifact against requirements, evidence, and relevant standards—not simply whether the reviewer would have made the same choices. Google’s guidance treats technical facts and data as the basis for resolving disagreements and allows author preference when alternatives are equally valid. That reduces unproductive rewrites while preserving scrutiny of substantive defects.
Set scope and criteria before review
State which claims, requirements, files, risks, or decisions are in scope. A reviewer cannot establish that an output is sound merely by reading it casually; the criteria need to make clear what “sound” means for this task. ISO/IEC 20246:2017 provides a generic framework for review activities, techniques, and documentation templates. ISO says the edition was confirmed in 2022 and remains current.
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Use more independence when impartiality is essential
For formal assessments, the reviewer’s separation from development, operation, or management may matter as much as their expertise. CMS guidance emphasizes impartiality in assessor roles. NIST’s IV&V definition specifies an objective third party. These principles are useful when the result must withstand scrutiny; they do not mean every team pull request needs an external evaluator.
Rank #3
What this principle does—and does not—claim
- It does mean that a creator’s self-check should not be presented as independent assurance for consequential decisions.
- It does not mean agents cannot catch their own errors, or that every agent task needs human review.
- It does not establish that human reviewers always outperform agents. The available formal guidance defines impartiality and review practices; it does not provide a direct comparative error rate for agent self-review versus independent review.
- It does mean that tests and linters should be used for repeatable mechanical checks, while judgment and accountability remain explicit for issues they cannot settle.
References for formal review design
For teams formalizing review processes, ISO/IEC 20246:2017, Work product reviews, covers a general framework, activities, techniques, and documentation. A related standard, ISO/IEC 25041:2012, is an evaluation guide for developers, acquirers, and independent evaluators of software products; ISO says it was confirmed in 2024 and remains current.
For practical code-review workflow, the UK Home Office’s Code reviews guidance covers allocating time, constructive feedback, pull-request templates, and automated checks. Google’s The Standard of Code Review explains how to assess changes and handle disagreements.
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