Cross-Model LLM Code Review: Should you use Claude to review Codex or vice versa?

Title:Cross-Model LLM Code Review: Should you use Claude to review Codex or vice versa?

Abstract:Developers increasingly use two coding agents together: one writes a draft, and the other reviews it. However, it is not clear whether the pairing is worth its cost and time, or whether the order of the pairing matters. We run a controlled experiment on 116 recent hard and medium lcb tasks with Claude and Codex across six conditions to approximate a software practitioner's workflow: both solo baselines, both cross-model orderings, and both same-model orderings. The reviewer sees the problem and the writer's draft but cannot execute tests, which approximates a code review step. Claude review raises Codex drafts from 71.6% to 89.7% ($p_{BH}=.001$); Codex self review raises them to 84.5% ($p_{BH}=.022$). The reverse direction does not pay off: Codex reviewing Claude drafts drops the pass rate from 91.4% to 82.8% ($p_{BH}=.046$), and Claude self review leaves the 91.4% baseline unchanged. Our evaluation indicates that the useful pairing is asymmetric: use Claude to review Codex, not the other way around.

Software Engineering (cs.SE); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)

arXiv:2607.21656 [cs.SE]

(or arXiv:2607.21656v1 [cs.SE] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2607.21656 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

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