I was extremely skeptical at the beginning, and therefore critical of what was possible as my default stance. Despite all that, the latest iterations of cli agents which attach to LSPs and scan codebase context have been surprising me in a positive direction. I've given them tasks that require understanding the project structure and they've been able to do so. Therefore, for me my trajectory has been from skeptic to big proponent of the use, of course with all the caveats that at the end of the day, it is my code which will be pushed to prod. So I never went through the trough of disillusionment, but am arriving at productivity and find it great.
There are 3 parts of the process the AI agent can't do - the start, the middle and the end :) No, really, they need humans to identify tasks worth working on, then guide the model during development and providing iterative feedback, and in the end we incur the outcomes, good or bad. We are the consequence sinks, we take the costs and risks on ourselves. LLMs have no accountability.