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What is agentic engineering?
61–70 of 109 posts
Re: What is agentic engineering?
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
You appear to be confusing "produce working code" with "exclusively produce working code".
> You appear to be confusing "produce working code" with "exclusively produce working code". The confusion is not mine own. From the article cited: Dave Treadwell, Amazon's SVP of e-commerce services, told staff on Tuesday that a "trend of incidents" emerged since the third quarter of 2025, including "several major" incidents in the last few weeks, according to an internal document obtained by Business Insider. At le…
That's why I'm writing a guide about how to use this stuff to produce good code.
Re: What is agentic engineering?
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
And we haven't even started to see the security ramifications... my money is on the black hats in this race.
We are starting to see them, also the bugs too. But to your point I think this year it's quite likely we'll see at least 1 or 2 major AI-related security incidents..
I've been predicting a "challenger disaster" moment: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jan/8/llm-predictions-for-202...
Re: What is agentic engineering?
#64[flagged]
Re: What is agentic engineering?
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
That definition of software engineering is a great illustration of why I like the term agentic engineering. Using coding agents to responsibly and productively build good software benefits from all of those characteristics. The challenge I'm interested in is how we professionalize the way we use these new tools. I want to figure out how to use them to write better software than we were writing without them. See my de…
I’ve read the chapter and while the description is good, there’s no actual steps or at least a general direction/philosophy on how to get there. It does not need to be perfect, it just needs to be practical. Then we could contrast the methodology with what we already have to learn the tradeoffs, if they can be combined, etc… Anything that relates to “Agentic Engineering” is still hand-wavey or trying to impose a new…
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Re: What is agentic engineering?
#66I don't think we should be making this distinction. We're still engaged in software engineering. This isn't a new discipline, it's a new technique. We're still using testing, requirements gathering, etc. to ensure we've produced the correct product and that the product is correct. Just with more automation.
I agree, partly. I feel the main goal of the term “agentic engineering” is to distinguish the new technique of software engineering from “Vibe Coding.” Many felt vibe coding insinuated you didn’t know what you were doing; that you weren’t _engineering_. In other words, “Agentic engineering” feels like the response of engineers who use AI to write code, but want to maintain the skill distinction to the pure “vibe code…
> “Agentic engineering” feels like the response of engineers who use AI to write code, but want to maintain the skill distinction to the pure “vibe coders.”
If there's such. The border is vague at most.
There're "known unknowns" and "unknown unknowns" when working with systems. In this terms, there's no distinction between vibe-coding and agentic engineering.
Re: What is agentic engineering?
#67Agents are ? and the answer is circular, "agents run tools in a loop." And this guy knows things?! No. BS.
Re: What is agentic engineering?
#68Agents are ? and the answer is circular, "agents run tools in a loop." And this guy knows things?! No. BS.
Which definition of "agent" do you like to use?
I just bulked up that section by adding a couple of extra sentences, since you're right that I didn't actually define "agent" there clearly: https://simonwillison.net/guides/agentic-engineering-pattern...
Re: What is agentic engineering?
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree, partly. I feel the main goal of the term “agentic engineering” is to distinguish the new technique of software engineering from “Vibe Coding.” Many felt vibe coding insinuated you didn’t know what you were doing; that you weren’t _engineering_. In other words, “Agentic engineering” feels like the response of engineers who use AI to write code, but want to maintain the skill distinction to the pure “vibe code…
> “Agentic engineering” feels like the response of engineers who use AI to write code, but want to maintain the skill distinction to the pure “vibe coders.” If there's such. The border is vague at most. There're "known unknowns" and "unknown unknowns" when working with systems. In this terms, there's no distinction between vibe-coding and agentic engineering.
My definition to "vibe coding" is the one where you prompt without ever looking at the code that's being produced.
The moment you start paying attention to the code it's not vibe coding any more.
Update: I added that definition to the article: https://simonwillison.net/guides/agentic-engineering-pattern...
Re: What is agentic engineering?
#70I don't think we should be making this distinction. We're still engaged in software engineering. This isn't a new discipline, it's a new technique. We're still using testing, requirements gathering, etc. to ensure we've produced the correct product and that the product is correct. Just with more automation.
Actually, if you defer all your coding decisions to agents, then you're not doing engineering at all. You don't say you're doing "contractor engineering" when you pay some folks to write your app for you. At that point, you are squarely in the management field.