It's definitely anecdotal - and I agree about steering the robot. I find that analysis is harder than creation usually.
You have to be really good at skimming code quickly and looking at abstractions/logic.
Through my career, I almost never ask another team a question about their services, etc. I always built the habit of just looking at their code first. 9 times out of 10, I could answer my question or find a workaround for the bug in their code.
I think this built the skill of holding a lot of structure in my head and quickly accumulating it.
This is the exact thing you need when letting an agent run wild and then making sure everything looks ok.