arXiv AI

A Case Study in Assuring AI-Written Software

The article reports a case study of a production healthcare platform that was built using software‑engineering agents and overseen by an operator lacking formal software training. Over time the system evolved into a meta‑agent workflow where one agent wrote code, other agents supervised and reviewed it, and project rules carried lessons forward. The study found that tests, monitors, and reviewing agents were fallible—some measured proxies instead of outcomes, audits failed silently, checks disappeared from reports, and an automated repair caused operational disruption—highlighting that human control relied on aligning the intended outcome, the evidence used to judge it, the agents’ permissions, and the final human decision around the same objective.

arXiv AI
Aug 20

Professional Software Developers Don't Vibe, They Control: AI Agent Use for Coding in 2025

The paper titled "Professional Software Developers Don't Vibe, They Control: AI Agent Use for Coding in 2025" examines how experienced developers employ AI agents in software development. Through field observations and surveys, it finds that developers value agents for productivity but maintain control over design and implementation to ensure quality. They use agents as collaborative tools rather than full delegation, selecting tasks based on suitability and leveraging their expertise to guide agent behavior.

By Ruanqianqian Huang, Avery Reyna, Sorin Lerner, Haijun Xia, Brian Hempel
arXiv AI
Jun 8

Measuring Agents in Production

arXiv:2512. 04123v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: LLM-based agents already operate in production across many industries, yet we lack an understanding of what technical methods make deployments successful.

By Melissa Z. Pan, Negar Arabzadeh, Riccardo Cogo, Yuxuan Zhu, Alexander Xiong, Lakshya A Agrawal, Huanzhi Mao, Emma Shen, Sid Pallerla, Liana Patel, Shu Liu, Tianneng Shi, Xiaoyuan Liu, Jared Quincy Davis, Emmanuele Lacavalla, Alessandro Basile, Shuyi Yang, Paul Castro, Daniel Kang, Koushik Sen, Dawn Song, Joseph E. Gonzalez, Ion Stoica, Matei Zaharia, Marquita Ellis
arXiv AI
Aug 14

Humans are Missing from AI Coding Agent Research

arXiv:2608. 12355v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Recent progress in AI coding agent research has led to rapid improvements in agents' ability to autonomously perform complex software engineering tasks, from editing large codebases to executing long-horizon development workflows.

By Zora Z. Wang, John Yang, Kilian Lieret, Alexa Tartaglini, Valerie Chen, Yuxiang Wei, Zijian Wang, Lingming Zhang, Karthik Narasimhan, Ludwig Schmidt, Graham Neubig, Daniel Fried, Diyi Yang
arXiv AI
Sep 17

A Study of the Reliability of Agentic AI-Generated Programs

The paper investigates the reliability of software produced by agentic AI by comparing AI-generated versions of ten well-known Linux utilities to their human-written counterparts. Using fuzz testing (both black-box and coverage-guided AFL++), the authors find that AI-generated code is often as reliable or more reliable than the latest human versions, with fewer memory errors but a higher incidence of hangs. The study emphasizes that robust AI-generated software requires careful prompting, skilled human oversight, and that the AI workflow can serve as a cost-effective specification for sustainable code.

By Ayesha Shafique, Barton P. MIller, Elisa R. Heymann
arXiv AI
Aug 26

AI Agents Push Humans Out of the Loop

AI agents are increasingly autonomous, posing significant risks that current designs hinder effective human oversight. The paper argues that oversight is degraded by both design choices and the cognitive decline of users who rely heavily on automation. It calls for prioritizing human cognitive needs in AI agent development, proposing design affordances and protocols to maintain critical judgment and counter skill atrophy.

By Margaret Mitchell, Avijit Ghosh, Samir Passi