What is agentic software development?
Agentic software development is an operating model in which autonomous agents work across the whole software development lifecycle, from planning to release, while humans stay accountable at the gates. No single coiner is established; Microsoft wrote of “agentic DevOps” in May 2025 and Forrester titled a 2026 report The State of Agentic Software Development. The unit is the lifecycle rather than a single coding session.
Origin No single coiner is established: Microsoft wrote of “agentic DevOps” (opens in a new tab) on 19 May 2025, Hassan and colleagues of “Agentic Software Engineering (SE 3.0)” (opens in a new tab) on 7 September 2025, and Forrester’s Diego Lo Giudice wrote on 8 June 2026 in a blog post (opens in a new tab): “The new norm is agentic software development”.
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Why it matters.
The name is about scope. Our reading: a vibe-coded prototype is one person’s session that ends when “it mostly works” (Karpathy’s words); agentic software development is an organisation’s lifecycle that ends at a release with gates. Forrester puts vibe coding at the front of that lifecycle, not in place of it: “Product managers/owners vibe prototypes and features for the rest of the team to productize.” JetBrains’ Kirill Skrygan wrote on 22 September 2026 that agentic development “hasn’t changed what it costs to be wrong”, so every stage still needs a check that is not the agent’s own opinion.
Agentic software development vs vibe coding
Same agents, opposite scope: vibe coding is one person’s session, and agentic software development is an organisation’s lifecycle.
| Compared on | Vibe coding | Agentic software development |
|---|---|---|
| What it names | A way of working: accepting AI-written code without reading it | An operating model: agents across the whole lifecycle, humans at the gates |
| Who writes the code | The model | Agents, often several specialised ones, across the lifecycle |
| Who checks it | Nobody reads the diff; the human checks behaviour by eye | Pipelines, other agents and humans at the gates |
| What stops the loop | “it mostly works” (Karpathy) | A release |
| Where the name came from | Andrej Karpathy, post on X, 2 Feb 2025 | No coiner; Microsoft’s “agentic DevOps”, 19 May 2025 |
| Where it breaks | Past “throwaway weekend projects”, the scope Karpathy gave it himself | When the gates are missing: stages run, but nobody decides at them |
Names for the same shift, and who used them
Nobody owns the label. These are dated uses the research found, not proven firsts.
| Name | Used by | Date | In their words |
|---|---|---|---|
| agentic DevOps | Microsoft (Amanda Silver and Mario Rodriguez) | 19 May 2025 | “the next evolution of DevOps, reimagined for a world where intelligent agents collaborate with you and with each other” |
| Agentic Software Engineering (SE 3.0) | Hassan et al., arXiv paper | 7 Sep 2025 | “a new era where intelligent agents are tasked not with simple code generation, but with achieving complex, goal-oriented SE objectives” |
| agentic software development | Forrester (Diego Lo Giudice) | 8 Jun 2026 | “autonomous agents collaborate across the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC), toward more end-to-end automation” |
| agentic SDLC, AI SDLC, AI-native SDLC | Anthropic (Louis Claxton), AI-native SDLC playbook | 21 Aug 2026 | “the labels differ, but they describe the same thing” |
Questions about agentic software development.
How is agentic software development different from vibe coding?
Same agents, opposite scope. Vibe coding is one person’s session that ends when “it mostly works” (Karpathy). Agentic software development is an organisation’s lifecycle that ends at a release with gates, and Forrester puts vibe coding at the front of it: “Product managers/owners vibe prototypes and features for the rest of the team to productize.” No source sets the two side by side, so the contrast is our reading.
Is agentic software development the same as the agentic SDLC?
Anthropic’s AI-native SDLC playbook of 21 August 2026 says so: “the labels differ, but they describe the same thing”. Nobody owns either label. This site keeps them as separate glossary entries; our reading is that agentic software development names the operating model and the SDLC labels name its stages.
How is agentic software development different from agentic engineering?
In scope and audience. Agentic engineering is the practitioner’s discipline of directing agents without lowering the quality bar. Agentic software development is the organisation’s process from planning to release. The split is our reading. Hassan et al. use “engineering” for the larger step, writing of “elevating the practice from agentic coding to true agentic software engineering”.
Who coined agentic software development?
No coiner is established. It is a compound of “agentic” and “software development” that vendors and analysts use. Microsoft introduced “agentic DevOps” on 19 May 2025, Hassan and colleagues wrote of “Agentic Software Engineering (SE 3.0)” on 7 September 2025, and Forrester’s Diego Lo Giudice defined it in a blog post on 8 June 2026.
The vocabulary of AI-driven development
Every name below is defined against vibe coding: who writes the code, who checks it, and what stops the loop.
Read the long-form guide: agentic engineering vs vibe coding
Sources.
The primary sources outside this site that this page relies on.
- Agentic DevOps: Evolving software development with GitHub Copilot and Microsoft Azure (opens in a new tab) Amanda Silver and Mario Rodriguez, Microsoft Azure Blog
- Agentic Software Engineering: Foundational Pillars and a Research Roadmap (opens in a new tab) Ahmed E. Hassan et al., arXiv
- Agentic Software Development Takes The Lead: From Code Assistants To Orchestrated SDLC Agents (opens in a new tab) Diego Lo Giudice, Forrester
- The AI-native SDLC playbook (opens in a new tab) Louis Claxton, Anthropic
- JetBrains Air: Building a System of Products for Agentic Software Development (opens in a new tab) Kirill Skrygan, The JetBrains Blog
Keep reading.
The guides that go deeper, and the terms and comparisons next to this one.
In the docs
- The full A-Z glossarySubscription
- Vibe coding vs agentic engineering: 21 terms comparedFree
- The autonomy ladder: which level is your workflow at?Free
- The AI-native software development lifecycleSubscription
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- Software Factories: How to Build One and Keep It From RottingSubscription
- Level 5: You Run the Software FactoryFree
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