This is not an argument against coding tools. We build with agents every day. It is an argument about who owns the result.
What the tool does
It writes code when asked, often very well. Then it stops and waits. It does not decide what should be built, whether the empty state was forgotten, or whether the feature works in a real browser next to everything else.
Who does the rest
| Job | With a tool seat | With AgentCTO |
|---|---|---|
| PRD and edge cases | Your PM or lead | Included |
| Prompting and re-runs | Your engineers, hourly | Included |
| UI decisions | Still a designer's job | Included |
| End-to-end QA | Manual, on your QA | Included |
| Accountability | Yours | Named account manager |
When a tool is the right call
If you have engineers with spare hours who enjoy driving agents, a seat is great value. If your problem is that those hours do not exist, a cheaper way to type code does not fix it. You need the work owned from request to pull request.
Judge any option the same way: does a reviewable, tested pull request land in your repo without taking your team away from its own work?