I Stopped Reading Code. My Code Reviews Got Better.

By: Kieran Klaassen Source: Original URL Type: article

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I Stopped Reading Code. My Code Reviews Got Better.

By Kieran Klaassen

January 23, 2026

Source Code

A bug report: email signature formatting was off in Cora. Kieran asked Claude Code to investigate and fix it. By morning, the fix had touched 27 files, 1,000+ lines of code. Instead of reading it all, he had Claude summarize what changed and why.

Key sections:

The death of manual code review: Claude Code does the reading; human reviews the summary and decisions
Using the compound engineering plugin: Extracts “findings” from each review session
From findings to decisions: Findings get encoded as rules for future sessions
The fix is never the last fix: AI surfaces related issues automatically during review
The 50/50 rule: Split review time 50% on business logic (what it does), 50% on architectural decisions (why it’s structured that way)
Rethink reviews: Code review becomes “architectural review” — you’re reviewing decisions, not lines

Core insight: When AI writes all your code, your job in review is to evaluate decisions and encode lessons, not to verify syntax and logic line-by-line.