AI agents open pull requests faster than we review them. A setup that keeps the queue moving

A coding agent can finish a task in minutes. Then its pull request waits for a human, and it waits longer than the PRs people write by hand.

LinearB's 2026 Software Engineering Benchmarks Report covers more than 8.1 million pull requests from over 4,800 organizations. It found that "AI PRs wait 4.6x longer before review" but "are reviewed 2x faster once picked up". So the slow part is getting someone to pick it up. For agents, the gap is wider: "Agentic AI PRs have a PR Pickup Time 5.3x longer than Unassisted ones".

The AI Productivity Paradox Report 2025 from Faros AI used telemetry from over 10,000 developers across 1,255 teams. Developers on teams with high AI adoption "complete 21% more tasks and merge 98% more pull requests, but PR review time increases 91%".

In October 2025, GitHub said: "Coding agent now contributes to roughly 1.2 million pull requests per month".

Our team at DX Heroes sees the same thing: agent PRs finish fast and then wait for review.