# Google finds stale TODO comments send coding agents on unprompted detours

> Original title: Agent Distraction

- Source: Google Developers Blog
- Published: 2026-11-06T00:00:00.000Z
- Bad Influence: https://badinfluence.news/items/ht92ic5h3oudg69qvxv3o1vf9
- Original: https://developers.googleblog.com/agent-distraction/

## Summary

Google's analysis of agent traces across thousands of engineers found that 13% of sessions exposed agents to inline TODO(bug/...) or FIXME(bug/...) references, and 6% of those triggered follow-up actions. Of the unprompted detours, 41% chased closed bugs and 57% expanded into scope creep on open bugs, adding 70% more steps, 77% more tokens, and 105% more wait time per session.