That's not true. An agent in a loop can test itself, review, verify and iterate as much as needed. That's one of the primary reasons more capable models tend to have a higher success rate.
I don't disagree that multiple tests increase confidence, but it's not correct to argue that an agent in a loop harness is equivalent to oneshotting
It takes more than that. I had Claude do a feature, it took five minutes, then I had Claude do a code review of its changes, that took 65(!) separate agents and 40minutes.
I don’t think single agent loops are good enough.