Compare
Symptom
Human

A class whose methods all delegate straight through to another object — no decisions, no transformations.

Agent

A class whose methods all delegate straight through to another object — the agent traces every call to the real implementation, paying a hop for no decision.

Goal
Human

Callers talk directly to the real object; trivial passthroughs are deleted.

Agent

Callers talk to the real object directly; the agent's call traces are shorter and the real implementation's location is obvious.

Smellier version

class Manager {
reports() {
return this.team.members();
}
}

Fresher version

// Expose team directly when the wrapper adds nothing.
manager.team.members();
Example source: Illustrative example written for this site, not a quotation from any source.
Pressure
Human

An entire layer of indirection that adds no value; readers must follow every call to the real implementation.

Agent

An entire indirection layer the agent must navigate per method; the agent reading code through the middle man re-traces the delegation on every reasoning step.

Tradeoff
Human

Removing the middle man exposes the underlying object's full surface to every consumer; consumers that only needed a few methods now have access to all of them.

Agent

Direct access exposes the underlying object's full surface to every consumer; the agent loses any encapsulation the middle man was providing (even if mostly cosmetic).

Relief
Human

Fewer files, shorter call stacks, the implementation's location is obvious.

Agent

Fewer files; shorter call stacks; the agent's plan-and-execute loop touches the real implementation directly without the passthrough hop.

Trap
Human

Deleting any class whose methods mostly delegate, even ones that add legitimate authorization, validation, or auditing on top — the trivial-looking layer was load-bearing.

Agent

Deleting a passthrough that was actually doing real work — authorization, validation, auditing — removes a load-bearing layer the agent didn't recognize because the trivial-looking delegation masked it.