> to stretch the analogy, I don't believe much is lost "intellectually" by my use of a mech suit, as long as I observe carefully.

With all respect, that's nonsense.

Absolutely no one gains more than a superficial grasp of a skill just by observing.

And even with a good grasp of skills, human boredom is going to atrophy any ability you have to intervene.

It's why the SDCs (Tesla, I think) that required the driver to stay alert to take control while the car drove itself were such a danger - after 20+ hours of not having to to anything, the very first time a normal reaction time to an emergency is required, the driver is too slow to take over.

If you think you are learning something reviewing the LLM agent's output, try this: choose a new project in a language and framework you have never used, do your usual workflow of reviewing the LLMs PRs, and then the next day try to do a simple project in that new language and framework (that's the test of how much you learned).

Compare that result to doing a small project in a new language, and then the next day doing a different small project in that same language.

If you're at all honest with yourself, or care whether you atrophy or not, you'd actually run that experiment and control and objectively judge the results.