Chat is an amazing UI for AI. I don’t think it’s a good UI for software engineering (I will not promote)

I love chat interfaces. They're perfect for asking questions. They're great for brainstorming. They're even good for coding. But software engineering isn't just coding. It's preserving intent. It's reviewing decisions. It's tracking work. It's sharing knowledge. It's coordinating people (and now agents). After months working with Codex, Claude Code and local agents, I started noticing something. Every discussion seems to focus on: - bigger context windows - better models - more autonomous agents But my bottleneck isn't any of those anymore. It's engineering. Keeping intent. Keeping specs. Knowing which agent did what. Reviewing work. Sharing knowledge between agents. I don't think software engineering should happen inside conversations anymore. They more I use coding agents, the more I feel chats become the temporary layer. I'm developing an orchestrator with a graph-based workflow where agents execute around engineering artifacts instead of chats in a very visual way. I'm curious... Has anyone else reached a similar conclusion, or am I overthinking this?