A Software Engineer's Guide to Agentic Software Development (brittanyellich.com)

A senior GitHub engineer outlines a practical workflow called "Agentic Software Development": systematically delegating well-scoped, repeatable engineering tasks to coding agents (e.g., GitHub Copilot) while humans focus on exploratory, ambiguous, or high-judgment work. The approach is aimed at tackling tech debt—refactors, API updates, naming/typing changes and other maintainability improvements—by triaging only tasks you “know exactly how to do,” writing clear specifications (so a newcomer could complete them), and letting agents produce PRs that you validate, review, and ship. This isn’t “vibe coding”: it requires precise task scoping, preview environments, and more thorough human review of untested agent-produced code. Significance and technical implications: agents can cheaply complete many small tasks in parallel (author cites Copilot premium-request economics versus hours of human work), accelerating backlog reduction and preventing brittle code from accumulating into costly rewrites. Key operational changes include tighter issue descriptions, breaking work into small PRs, robust CI/preview environments, and a human-in-the-loop review step. The author notes cognitive limits—handling ~3–4 agentic reviews concurrently—and claims measurable gains (e.g., 4–6 tech-debt PRs/week alongside feature work). Early adopters may gain a lasting productivity edge, but success demands engineering hygiene, disciplined triage, and iterative learning.