--- title: Agentic engineering url: https://ftrlg.com/en/wiki/agentic-engineering/ lang: en published: 2026-10-08 version: 2 summary: Professional software development in which AI agents write the code, while the engineer sets the architecture and constraints and reviews the result. cite_as: "future.log, «Agentic engineering», https://ftrlg.com/en/wiki/agentic-engineering/" license: CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ --- # Agentic engineering **Agentic engineering** is professional software development in which [AI agents](https://ftrlg.com/en/wiki/autonomous-ai-agents/) write the code, while the engineer sets the architecture and constraints and reviews the result. The term was proposed by [Andrej Karpathy](https://ftrlg.com/en/wiki/andrej-karpathy/) in February 2026 as a counterpoint to [vibe coding](https://ftrlg.com/en/wiki/vibe-coding/).[^1] ⧗ The main difference is oversight. In vibe coding, a person accepts whatever the AI produced and does not read the code. In agentic engineering, they think the solution through in advance, hand its implementation to agents and review their work. ## History - **02.02.2025** Karpathy introduces the term “vibe coding”: AI writes all the code, and the person “forget[s] that the code even exists”.[^2] ⧗ - **02.2026** A year later Karpathy proposes the term “agentic engineering” for professional work with AI agents. According to The New Stack, he himself now barely writes code directly; he gives tasks to agents and reviews the result.[^1] ⧗ - **10.10.2026** Linus Torvalds publishes in his Linux kernel repository an experimental branch of 8 patches tagged “Assisted-by: LLM”: “The code, the test programs, the review behind the list above and the first draft of this text were done with an LLM coding assistant (Claude Code) under my direction”. On his laptop, reading one file from 8 threads became four times cheaper; he lists 10 known problems himself, and the branch is not merged into mainline.[^3] - **13.10.2026** [Anthropic](https://ftrlg.com/en/models/anthropic/): in May 2026 around 2,500 code changes a day were merged into its main repository on average, and over 30,000 a day by September, making source control the biggest development bottleneck. Seven people built a replacement for Git in five months — the centralized system Scion — along with the code review tool Antique; the authors say Scion is no general-purpose replacement for Git.[^4] ## Signals - 2026-10-13 — Geoffrey Huntley: «I could … update AGENTS.md, but there's still a delta, and it'll drift. Instead, I write a pre-commit hook … fail the commit, inject a prompt telling the agent to use the diagnostics library. All of a sudden it's ten out of ten» — developer, author of the “Ralph” technique for running agents in a loop, who works at the software-testing company Antithesis, in the essay “nobody should type code by hand anymore”, in the section calling skill packs and AGENTS.md “astrology for software engineers” (https://ftrlg.com/en/signals/cp7q58796/) ## See also [Vibe coding](https://ftrlg.com/en/wiki/vibe-coding/) · AI code audit · Claude Code · [Autonomous AI agents](https://ftrlg.com/en/wiki/autonomous-ai-agents/) ## References [^1]: Vibe coding is passé. Karpathy has a new name for the future of software — The New Stack, 10.02.2026. [thenewstack.io](https://thenewstack.io/vibe-coding-is-passe-karpathy-has-a-new-name-for-the-future-of-software/) ⧗ [^2]: Andrej Karpathy: “There's a new kind of coding I call vibe coding…” — X, 02.02.2025. [x.com](https://x.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383) ⧗ [^3]: Linus Torvalds: noref-filemap-read-with-llm — torvalds/linux.git, git.kernel.org, 10.10.2026. [git.kernel.org](https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/log/?h=noref-filemap-read-with-llm) [^4]: Redesigning source control at Anthropic — Anthropic, 13.10.2026. [anthropic.com](https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/redesigning-source-control) — future.log, «Agentic engineering», https://ftrlg.com/en/wiki/agentic-engineering/ · CC BY 4.0