Professional Software Developers Don't Vibe, They Control: AI Agent Use for Coding in 2025

TL;DR

This study explores how professional developers use AI agents in 2025, revealing they control and guide agents to maintain quality, rather than fully delegating tasks, emphasizing the importance of expertise and strategic oversight.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into experienced developers' strategies for controlling AI agents in software development, highlighting the balance between automation and human oversight.

Findings

Developers value agents as productivity tools but retain control.

Control strategies leverage developer expertise to ensure software quality.

Positive attitudes towards agents are based on their complementary role.

Abstract

The rise of AI agents is transforming how software can be built. The promise of agents is that developers might write code quicker, delegate multiple tasks to different agents, and even write a full piece of software purely out of natural language. In reality, what roles agents play in professional software development remains in question. This paper investigates how experienced developers use agents in building software, including their motivations, strategies, task suitability, and sentiments. Through field observations (N=13) and qualitative surveys (N=99), we find that while experienced developers value agents as a productivity boost, they retain their agency in software design and implementation out of insistence on fundamental software quality attributes, employing strategies for controlling agent behavior leveraging their expertise. In addition, experienced developers feel overall positive about incorporating agents into software development given their confidence in complementing the agents' limitations. Our results shed light on the value of software development best practices in effective use of agents, suggest the kinds of tasks for which agents may be suitable, and point towards future opportunities for better agentic interfaces and agentic use guidelines.