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Software Engineering in Practice Track Paper
When Review Alone No Longer Scales: Layered Supervision in AI-Assisted Software Engineering

Authors: Markus Stolze and Mirco Strässle

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 394, 20th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM 2026)


Abstract
AI-assisted development tools enable software engineers to generate implementations at substantially higher speed and volume than in traditional workflows. Software teams have long relied on guardrails - standing control mechanisms such as code review, linting, testing, and CI/CD pipelines - to maintain quality and coordination. High-throughput AI-assisted generation increases pressure on these guardrails - straining their capacity to keep pace with the volume and rate of generated changes - and reshapes how organizations supervise development workflows, yet relatively little is known about how existing guardrails evolve in response. We conducted a qualitative interview study with five software engineering practitioners, situated within a broader practitioner survey. Our findings indicate that organizations distribute the work of supervision across multiple guardrail layers: preventive guardrails (produced by externalizing architectural intent and conventions into machine-interpretable form), executable guardrails (linting, testing, and CI/CD repurposed as scalable supervision infrastructure), and human oversight (shifting from line-by-line inspection toward supervisory interpretation focused on architectural reasoning, explainability, and long-term maintainability). We characterize this as a transition from review-centric guardrails toward layered supervision, in which no single guardrail carries the supervision load alone.

Cite as

Markus Stolze and Mirco Strässle. When Review Alone No Longer Scales: Layered Supervision in AI-Assisted Software Engineering. In 20th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 394, pp. 90:1-90:12, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)


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@InProceedings{stolze_et_al:LIPIcs.ESEM.2026.90,
  author =	{Stolze, Markus and Str\"{a}ssle, Mirco},
  title =	{{When Review Alone No Longer Scales: Layered Supervision in AI-Assisted Software Engineering}},
  booktitle =	{20th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM 2026)},
  pages =	{90:1--90:12},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-450-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{394},
  editor =	{Feldt, Robert and Paasivaara, Maria and Mendez, Daniel and Wagner, Stefan and Bar\'{o}n, Marvin Mu\~{n}oz},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ESEM.2026.90},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-280585},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ESEM.2026.90},
  annote =	{Keywords: AI-assisted software development, AI coding tools, validation, code review, software teams, guardrails}
}

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