What is agentic coding in software engineering?

Agentic coding refers to AI systems capable of planning code changes, executing them across multiple steps, and iterating based on feedback, moving beyond simple code completion.

Why do enterprise AI coding deployments underperform?

Underperformance is often due to insufficient context engineering—AI agents lack a structured understanding of the codebase's environment, history, and intent.

How can enterprises improve AI agent coding productivity?

Success comes from redesigning workflows, engineering context as an asset, and integrating AI agents into secure, reviewable processes like CI/CD pipelines.

Home / Technology / AI Agents Code: Context is Key

AI Agents Code: Context is Key

14 Dec

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Summary

Agentic coding requires planning, execution, and feedback loops.
Context engineering, not models, limits enterprise AI performance.
Workflow redesign is crucial for AI agent productivity gains.

Generative AI in software engineering is advancing towards agentic coding, enabling AI systems to plan, execute, and iterate on code changes. This sophisticated approach requires AI to reason across design, testing, and validation stages, moving beyond isolated code snippets. Despite platform advancements supporting multi-agent collaboration, early enterprise deployments often see productivity declines if workflows and environments are not addressed.

The primary challenge for successful agentic coding lies in context engineering. AI agents require a structured understanding of codebases, including dependencies, test harnesses, and change history. Teams that engineer context effectively create tooling to manage the agent's working memory and design deliberation steps for clear specifications, treating them as reviewable artifacts.

Beyond tooling, enterprises must re-architect workflows to leverage AI agents. Productivity gains emerge from rethinking processes, not just layering AI onto existing ones. Integrating agentic activity into CI/CD pipelines ensures AI-generated code meets the same security and governance standards as human-written code, establishing defined guardrails for AI autonomy.