The code isn't out and I thought you guys couldn't come to consensus until there was code
That is true formally. If the code comes out and it sucks, witnesses will reject it regardless of what was informal consensus earlier, and if it is very unpopular, especially with large stakeholders, witnesses who try to approve it will be voted out. Or for that matter, people may simply change their minds.
Informally, there have been discussions for months to years and a rough consensus appears to be in place to move forward with EIP. But ultimately you are correct that we won't know for sure until a specific hard fork candidate is considered for activation on the blockchain and then either is or is not activated.