Rootly Drops Small PR Rule as Agentic AI Changes Code Review Economics
Agentic AI is rewriting code review playbooks. Rootly ditches its 'small PR' rule — blast radius now matters more than line count.
Why it matters
As AI agents become the primary code generators, engineering best practices built for human workflows are becoming obsolete. This is a real case study of how AI adoption forces teams to rethink operational discipline — a conversation practitioners need to have before their agents ship code that breaks in production.
The key facts
10 to knowRootly dropped small pull request size rule
Shift from measuring PR size to assessing blast radius
Feature flags and rollback capability now prioritized over line counts
AI agents now generating most of the company's code
Code review practice change driven by agentic AI adoption
Engineering workflow adaptation to agent-driven development
Rootly drops small PR size rule due to AI agent code generation
Shift in assessment from PR size to blast radius
Feature flags and rollback capability now primary risk controls vs. line counts
Practice change driven by majority of code now generated by AI agents
Go to the source
InfoQ AI/MLinfoq.com
Publisher excerpt: Incident management platform provider Rootly has published an account of its decision to drop its long-standing small pull request rule, arguing that the practice no longer serves its purpose now that AI agents generate most of its code. The company describes a shift from measuring PR size to…