Why do coding agents need a research phase before optimizing code?

Question

Accepted Answer

Agents working from code alone generate shallow hypotheses and miss critical optimizations because they lack domain knowledge about why code is slow or what alternatives exist outside the codebase. Adding a research phase where agents read papers and study competing projects helps them identify high-impact improvements like operator fusions that code-only approaches overlook.

NuggetsAI

NuggetsAI

Research phase helps coding agents find 5 optimizations for 15% speed boost