Why is investing in the build loop so often wasted?#
Because the constraint usually sits in the delivery loop around it — in review, approval, release and measurement, where the waiting happens. Speeding up a step that was never the bottleneck produces a faster queue into the same wall.
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What is the symptom of a misplaced investment?#
A large gap between active time and elapsed time. If a change takes forty minutes of work and eleven days to reach production, the build loop is not what is holding it back, and another coding assistant will not close that gap.
This is the mechanism behind the AI productivity paradox: individual speed-ups that are real, measurable and invisible in delivery, because they land on the part of the system that was already fast.