The codebase is large, or you have files with thousands of lines of code? Because there’s a big difference. AI agents are perfectly able to work with large codebases, but they do have problems with large files (which usually are a sign of terrible code).
The same is true of most software built by humans, and AI is able to refactor, if you ask it to.
Not in my experience.
Skill issue :shrug:
Context issue.
My code base is so large the agent collapses mid way over these kinds of tasks.
The codebase is large, or you have files with thousands of lines of code? Because there’s a big difference. AI agents are perfectly able to work with large codebases, but they do have problems with large files (which usually are a sign of terrible code).
For an idea, we have over 150 gradle modules. Most modules range 3-20 kotlin files, with the older ones and new important ones reaching +100 files.
Copilot often chokes doing grep when finding what files to work on. Then again when a minute change spans more than 20 files.
My experience with my hobbies projects is much better, or when writing new code on big project that I don’t need to stick to existing code standards.
It’s a very narrow scenario where it does what I need and I actually save time.