I think it makes the annoying part less annoying?

Also re: "I spent longer arguing with the agent and recovering the file than I would have spent writing the test myself."

In my humble experience arguing with an LLM is a waste of time, and no-one should be spending time recovering files. Just do small changes one at a time, commit when you get something working, and discard your changes and try again if it doesn't.

I don't think AI is a panacea, it's just knowing when it's the right tool for the job and when it isn't.