GoKawiilStudy: AI coding agents boost code volume but not software output
Harvard researchers Fiona Chen and James Stratton analyzed Jellyfish analytics covering 300 million work events across more than 700 software firms and 700,000 employees from 2021 to March 2026. They found that while AI coding assistants and agents increase the volume of code generated, firms show little evidence of increased software output or reduced employment, because human code review becomes a bottleneck, with longer reviews, more revision requests, and more reviewer comments.