CLI Agents Still Require IDE Review, So Plan Your Workflow Accordingly

The agent finished. The terminal says "Done."

You open the file anyway.

The workflow reality

CLI coding agents sell a compelling pitch: run tasks in parallel, work across any repo, skip the IDE overhead. And the pitch is real. You can spin up multiple terminals, fire off planning tasks, let agents churn through fact-finding while you focus on something else.

But then the agent finishes. And you open the file.

Not because the agent failed. Because you don't know if it succeeded until you look. The output exists. Whether it's correct is a different question.

"I don't think I trust the models enough just yet to let it run and not check what it's doing. Not as it's doing it, but at the end. I like to at least take a look at the code at the end once it's done."

Dan, Roo Cast S01E06

This isn't a critique of CLI tools. It's a workflow observation. The agent runs outside your IDE, but the review happens inside it. Your workflow now has a mandatory handoff step.

The expectation gap

There was a moment when the trajectory felt different. Models were getting capable enough that you could imagine handing off a task and getting back merge-ready code. No review. No double-checking. Just: prompt, wait, ship.

That moment hasn't arrived yet.

"I saw us getting to the point of just giving a large language model a command and it producing something that I was ready to keep. I saw this as happening and I think it is happening, but I saw it as happening much sooner than I currently think it's going to happen."

Dan, Roo Cast S01E06

The timeline shifted. Not because the models regressed, but because the bar for "ready to keep" is higher than "looks plausible." Production code has edge cases. It has integration points. It has that one function that breaks if you change the return type.

Models are getting closer. But "closer" still means you open the file.

The actual benefit

CLI agents aren't about removing review. They're about parallelism.

The value shows up when you have three fact-finding tasks that don't depend on each other. Run them in parallel. Let them churn while you're in a meeting. Come back to three completed explorations instead of one.

"You're not locked into an IDE. So you can take it to any repo that you want in any kind of codebase and it'll work."

Adam, Roo Cast S01E06

The flexibility is real. The autonomy is not.

Plan accordingly: CLI tools are discovery engines and parallelism multipliers, not fire-and-forget code generators. The workflow includes a review step, and that review step happens in an IDE where you can actually read the diff.

CLI agents vs IDE-integrated agents

The tradeoff

If you treat CLI agent output as final, you're trusting a process that doesn't warrant it yet. If you treat every output as requiring deep review, you've added overhead without gaining the parallelism benefit.

The middle ground: know which tasks warrant light review (planning docs, exploration summaries, boilerplate) and which require line-by-line attention (anything touching auth, anything modifying existing logic, anything with side effects).

Scope the task to match the review you're willing to do.

How Roo Code closes the loop on review

Roo Code operates as an IDE-integrated agent that keeps the review step where it belongs: right next to the code. When the agent proposes changes, you see the diff inline. When it runs commands or tests, you see the output in context. This lets you close the loop - the agent executes, you review, you approve, and iteration continues without switching tools.

The BYOK model means you bring your own API keys and control your costs directly. No token markup, no intermediary. You decide which tasks get which models, and you review outputs in the same environment where you write code.

For workflows that require parallel exploration, Roo Code supports multiple concurrent tasks within the IDE. You get the parallelism benefit without the context-switching cost of moving between CLI output and a separate editor for review.

Why this matters for your workflow

If you're adopting CLI agents for speed, build the review step into your mental model from the start. The disappointment comes from expecting full autonomy and getting "pretty good output that still needs eyes."

The speed gain is real, but it's in the parallel execution, not in skipping review. You can run four exploratory tasks while you're heads-down on something else. You cannot merge four PRs without looking at the diffs.

Your workflow needs two phases: agent execution (parallelizable, async, can run while you're offline) and human review (sequential, requires attention, happens in the IDE).

If your process treats agent output as draft rather than final, CLI tools deliver on their promise. If your process expects ready-to-merge code, adjust the expectation.

The models will get there. They haven't yet. Plan your workflow for where they are, not where you hoped they'd be.