The paper examines how AI coding agents are evolving beyond simple autocomplete to perform complex tasks such as repository inspection, multi-file editing, tool execution, test writing, pull request creation, and long-duration work with minimal supervision. It highlights that while these agents boost coding activity, significant bottlenecks remain in review, integration, testing, security, deployment, and production operations, and that the economics of software development are shifting toward variable token, tool, sandbox, CI, and rework costs. The authors synthesize recent research and industry data to propose four engineering concepts—Agentic SDLC Throughput Paradox, Production-Qualified Change, Verification Tax, and an Agentic SDLC Control Plane—to guide the allocation of autonomy within cost, reliability, and human-attention constraints, ultimately reframing the research focus to production-qualified value per dollar, reviewer-hour, and operational risk.
By Happy Bhati
arXiv:2606. 05608v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: For over half a century, software engineering has operated on a foundational premise: human engineers decompose problems, encode decision logic into static code, and manually adapt that code as requirements evolve.
By Zhenfeng Cao
arXiv:2606. 05608v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: For over half a century, software engineering has operated on a foundational premise: human engineers decompose problems, encode decision logic into static code, and manually adapt that code as requirements evolve.
By Zhenfeng Cao
arXiv:2607. 21832v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Recent advances in large language models and their rapid adoption across software engineering tasks have made Artificial Intelligence (AI) coding agents an integral component of modern software development workflows.
By Iren Mazloomzadeh, Mohammad Mehdi Morovati, Foutse Khomh
The paper introduces Spec-Driven Agentic Development (SDAD), a framework that leverages large language models to ingest extensive functional requirement documents and repository context in a single workflow, turning specification quality into the engine for autonomous software delivery. SDAD blends disciplined upfront formalisation with rapid implementation, encompassing intent capture, machine‑readable specifications, agentic synthesis, and multi‑agent verification with human sign‑off. It positions AI‑code as a fourth production paradigm, compares it to traditional Waterfall and Agile approaches, and extends the model to team role evolution, quantitative governance metrics, and a staged migration blueprint for practical adoption.
By Vu Hung Nguyen, Thanh Nguyen
arXiv:2607. 10856v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The rise of Software Engineering (SE) agents, i.
By Yunbo Lyu, David Williams, Jieke Shi, Zhensu Sun, Chao Peng, Zhou Yang, Federica Sarro, David Lo
arXiv:2606. 03907v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Agentic AI coding tools write code with increasing autonomy and in doing so decide when to import a library and when to implement functionality from scratch.
By Jai Lal Lulla, Matthias Galster, Jie M. Zhang, Sebastian Baltes, Christoph Treude
arXiv:2607. 07980v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Coding agents now author entire pull requests, and practitioners sharply disagree about what this does to code review: whether it becomes the bottleneck, whether human review is still necessary, and whether it quietly erodes the understanding that it once built.
By Shyam Agarwal, Courtney Miller, Christian K\"astner, Bogdan Vasilescu
arXiv:2606.21804v2 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: Maintainability is a core dimension of software engineering, shaping how code is written, reviewed, and developed over time. While coding age...
By Shaswat Patel, Betty Li Hou, Arun Purohit, Kai Xu, Jane Pan, He He, Valerie Chen
arXiv:2607. 03691v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Coding agents, autonomous systems that use large language models (LLMs) to resolve software engineering tasks, rely on agent harness: a middleware layer in between a developer and a large language model that orchestrates system prompts, tool execution, context management, and iterative reasoning loops.
By Oussama Ben Sghaier, Hao Li, Bram Adams, Ahmed E. Hassan
arXiv:2606. 14594v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: AI-assisted software development has moved from line-level autocomplete to agents that can plan changes, edit files, and submit pull requests with limited human supervision.
By Jassem Manita, Aziz Amari
arXiv:2606. 04967v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: AI tools for programming are no longer just autocomplete or chat assistants: they organize themselves as development frameworks, with process, roles, artifacts and verification.
By Sanderson Oliveira de Macedo