AI Agents and the Refactoring That Never Happens

As AI agents take on more coding tasks, experienced developers have stopped reflexively refactoring overly complex code sections, a critical maintenance practice historically triggered by human cognitive limits. The shift is concerning because modularity and code clarity were never aesthetic preferences but necessary accommodations for human working memory—principles that become invisible when AI can navigate complexity that would confuse people. Without this "refactoring reflex," long-lived systems risk becoming increasingly difficult for human developers to understand, maintain, and safely modify.