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I mean obviously mileage does vary from project to project and task to task, but i think you might be overestimating mid-level developers. Or you've been really lucky with your recruitment ! Cause i would describe them just the way you described Opus. Pretty eager, kind of try-hard, decent engineering chops but often misdirected with dumb approaches.

Of course my experience is limited and i've never really been in a managing role but i've been the adult in a fair number of rooms and i've done my share of "grooming sprints" and dispatching tasks.

That being said, there are projects that are horribly reluctant to agentic coding. It's pretty rare as most codebases nowadays are bog standard and rely on roughly the same abstractions, but i've seen it happen. It can come from the complexity of the domain, or of the codebase, or from the way documentation and tribal knowledge clash, or a myriad other reasons. Often it's the kind of projects that require more mature devs and can't really onboard juniors/mids.

When it digs itself into a hole, it’s very bad at trying to amend the mess that has accumulated

Oh yeah definitely. Once it's in the hole you better scratch that branch off and restart with more specific instructions cause agents are very "additive", they don't often think to remove stuff and change their approach. Again, kind of like mid devs once they're committed to an implementation plan.