Coding Agents Don't Understand Your Codebase. Here's What They Actually Do.

Coding agents don't understand your codebase. Yeah, sounds weird I know. They edit your files, run your tests, fix bugs across multiple modules. It feels like they get it. I spent a while looking into how these tools actually work under the hood. There's no deep understanding happening. I mean, there IS reasoning - but not as deep as you may think. They can't look at your repo and form a mental model the way a human engineer does. They don't "know" your architecture. They don't reason about your system. They process text, make a guess, and check what happens. That's not me being negative.