Constrained Intelligence: How Better Diagnostics Tame Over-Helpful Code Agents

AI coding agents like Codex tend to over-solve problems when facing uncertainty, making unnecessary changes that creep far beyond the original request. The author discovered that by building a better diagnostic system (Scarab), they reduced ambiguity in the repair workflow, which paradoxically improved the agent's performance. The insight is counterintuitive: properly constraining an AI agent's problem space can produce better results than allowing it maximum freedom.