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World desk4 min

What Do You Do While AI Codes? Make It Argue With Itself

While an AI codes, ask a critic to identify assumptions, edge cases and plausible failure paths. Then verify its claims against the code, tests and system context.
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While an AI coding assistant works, use a separate critique pass to look for assumptions, edge cases and plausible failure paths. Treat the result as a list of questions to verify—not a vote, proof of correctness or substitute for human judgment.

What an AI-versus-AI code review can—and cannot—do

Making an AI “argue with itself” is a review technique: one pass produces or changes code, while another looks for reasons the change might fail. The critic can surface a different perspective and make potential weaknesses easier to inspect. It can also miss a defect, invent one, or offer a confident but mistaken rebuttal.

OpenAI has discussed debate as a safety proposal in which agents present competing arguments and a human judges which is stronger. That makes arguments inspectable; it does not establish that the apparent winner is true or that debate reliably catches code defects. OpenAI’s work on AI-written critiques also addresses limits in critiques and the difficulty people can have assessing challenging tasks. OpenAI’s discussion of AI-written critiques and its debate proposal provide useful context, but neither is a code-review guarantee.

In practical terms, the useful output is a set of specific claims to check: “this branch can receive an empty value,” for example, or “this update may overwrite a concurrent change.” A second generated opinion is not equivalent to a test, a static-analysis result or a reviewer who understands the system.

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A practical workflow while the coding assistant works

  1. Bound the change

    Give the coding assistant a focused task and relevant constraints. Keep the change small enough to inspect; broad, mixed changes make it harder to connect a suspected flaw to a particular decision.

  2. Run an independent critique pass

    After the code is drafted, ask a critic to inspect the relevant diff and context. When possible, use a separate model or agent that did not produce the change. A separate reviewer may reduce shared assumptions, but it still may lack repository or architectural context. A same-model self-critique is convenient, though it may repeat the author’s blind spots.

  3. Demand actionable findings

    Ask for likely bugs, unhandled edge cases, incorrect assumptions and—where relevant—security or data-integrity risks. Require each finding to point to a file and code location, describe a plausible failure path, and distinguish blockers from suggestions. Ask the critic to say when it lacks enough context rather than fill gaps with guesses.

  4. Ask the author to respond, then verify

    Have the coding assistant address each finding with evidence from the implementation or tests. Treat both the critique and the rebuttal as claims: inspect the code, run relevant tests, and use static analysis or other suitable tools. Escalate high-impact or system-specific questions to a human reviewer with the needed context.

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  5. Make the final decision yourself

    Decide whether the change meets the product and system requirements, not just whether one agent persuaded another. Review can happen in a pull request, but it can also be part of ongoing refinement. Tests, tool feedback and team review answer different questions; none alone proves overall correctness.

This is a practical synthesis of tool-interactive critique and focused review guidance, not a protocol shown to improve outcomes in every project. Microsoft Research’s CRITIC work studies critique combined with tools and feedback; the key distinction is that a tool can provide evidence beyond another generated opinion. Martin Fowler’s discussion of review, testing and smaller changes and guidance on focused AI review prompts offer complementary workflow advice.

Choose the review method for the question

These approaches are complementary rather than interchangeable. Sources describe the approaches, but do not establish a head-to-head trial proving which produces the best code review.

Approach What it can contribute What to watch
Same-model self-critique A quick second pass that can list assumptions and potential edge cases. The author and critic may share blind spots; generated criticism is not independent verification.
Separate model or agent A reviewer less directly tied to the original drafting pass. Its independence does not ensure access to the project’s architecture, constraints or full repository context.
Tests and other tools Executable or analyzable feedback about behavior and specified properties. Checks cover only what they are designed to examine; passing results do not prove the change is correct in every relevant situation.
Pull-request review A structured place for people to inspect a change and discuss its rationale. Its usefulness depends on the scope of the change, available context and quality of review; it is one review format, not the whole process.
Ongoing team refinement Review and feedback can be incorporated throughout development, not only at a final approval step. It still requires suitable checks and decisions by people who understand the system.

For pull-request tradeoffs and review practice, see Fowler’s Pull Request discussion. GitHub’s adversarial-review repository is an implementation example of multi-agent review, not independent evidence that the approach improves code quality.

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Prompt for findings you can actually check

Adapt this prompt to the language and risk of the change. Include the diff, relevant surrounding code and constraints; a critic cannot reliably assess context it has not been given.

Review this change as a skeptical code reviewer. Do not rewrite it yet.

Context and constraints:
[Relevant requirements, invariants, interfaces, and compatibility constraints]

Inspect the diff and relevant surrounding code for:
- likely bugs and unhandled edge cases
- assumptions that may be false
- security or data-integrity risks, if applicable

For each finding, provide:
- severity: blocker or suggestion
- file and line or code location
- the assumption or behavior at issue
- a plausible sequence that would cause failure
- what evidence or test could confirm or rule it out

Separate confirmed observations from hypotheses. If context is missing, state what is missing. Do not treat the absence of a finding as proof that the change is correct.

Fowler’s Sensible Defaults guidance similarly emphasizes explicit context, focused review requests and structured findings. The prompt’s value is not that its wording guarantees a good review; it helps turn an open-ended “check this code” request into claims that can be examined.

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