How Developers Should Approach Code Review When AI Builds and Reviews Code

As AI tools increasingly handle both code implementation and initial review, developers face a new question about where human oversight is still necessary. A practical mental model positions the developer as a manager with final accountability, rather than a line-by-line inspector of every change. Under this approach, human review should focus on ownership boundaries, architecture, verification strategy, and high-risk areas such as security, licensing, billing, and authentication. Attempting to deeply inspect every AI-generated line is seen as unscalable, while making accountability boundaries explicit — defining what 'done' means and which non-functional requirements matter — is proposed as a more effective alternative. The shift reframes developer value away from personally writing all code and toward designing and running a reliable development system.