A coding agent is useful when it can act inside a clear engineering boundary. Without that boundary, a successful-looking change can be difficult to review, reproduce, or recover. The central design question is not how much autonomy can be granted, but which authority is justified by the task and its evidence.
Scope is a control
A bounded task names the desired outcome, the relevant context, the files or surfaces that may change, and the operations that are not allowed. This makes both the agent's work and the reviewer's expectations more precise.
Validation must be layered
Quality gates, test gates, artifact checks, and human review answer different questions. A workflow that records only the final command status loses the distinction between syntax, behavior, packaging, and system-level intent.
Recovery is part of authority
An agent should have a clear stop condition and a recovery path when evidence is incomplete or state diverges. Human approval boundaries are not a sign that the system failed; they are how consequential uncertainty stays visible.