Pair programming, in its original sense, was a practice between two humans: one driving, one navigating, both engaged with the same problem at the same time. The driver typed. The navigator watched, asked questions, caught mistakes, thought about what came next. They switched roles. The discipline was that neither could check out — disengagement defeated the point.
The practice translates better to working with an agent than people usually expect, and the translation reveals what is actually at stake.
The risk
Working with a stronger pair partner has always carried a specific risk: you stop thinking. The other person is faster, more confident, more likely to know the answer. The path of least resistance is to type what they say and stop forming your own opinions. The result is short-term productivity and long-term skill atrophy. You finish the task. You also finish the task without learning anything, and the next time you face a similar problem alone, you discover that you cannot.
This was already a known dynamic with junior-senior pairing. With agents, the asymmetry is sharper. The agent is faster than any pair partner you have worked with. It is more confident, by virtue of being a system that does not hedge. It will produce a full answer to almost any question you ask. The temptation to type what it says and move on is correspondingly stronger.
