Opus 4.5 max (1m tokens) and above were the tipping point for me, before that, I agree with 100% of what you said.

But even with Opus 4.6 max / GPT 5.4 high it takes time, you need to provide the right context, add skills / subagents, include tribal knowledge, have a clear workflow, just like you onboard a new developer. But once you get there, you can definitely get it to do larger and larger tasks, and you definitely get (at least the illusion) that it "understands" that it's doing.

It's not perfect, but definitely can code entire features, that pass rigorous code review (by more than one human + security scanners + several AI code reviewers that review every single line and ensure the author also understands what they wrote)