Agentic Coding
Software development where an AI agent autonomously plans, writes, tests and ships code with minimal human keystrokes.
In detail
Agentic coding is the next step beyond AI-assisted code suggestions. The agent is given a goal, plans how to achieve it, makes file changes across an entire codebase, runs tests, fixes its own errors and may even deploy. Tools like Anthropic's Claude Code, Cursor's Background Agents, OpenAI's Codex and open-source utilities like OpenClaw operate this way. The human role shifts from writing code to setting goals, reviewing diffs and intervening on critical paths.
Why it matters for Australian business
Agentic coding can multiply a small Australian business's development capacity, but it also gives an AI program ongoing access to your code, your file system and (if not sandboxed) your production infrastructure. The Australian Cyber Security Centre's Essential Eight treats application control as a foundational mitigation, and an unsupervised agent is the opposite of that. Always run agentic tools inside an isolated sandbox, restrict network access and review every change before merge.