I spent last week in Bengaluru with the Doppler team, working on volume 34 of the Thoughtworks Technology Radar. It was an intense but fascinating process, especially given how quickly things are changing in the industry right now. The new edition will be published in April.
Reactions To My Previous Article
I wrote recently that the next generation of infrastructure tools is for developers, and that agentic software engineering may help make this transition real. I deliberately used the term “NoOps” to echo an early DevOps-era argument: operations work doesn’t disappear, but the role changes.
Back in 2012 “NoOps” triggered backlash it sounded like there would be no need for ops folks when infrastructure was automated. But the point was different. We needed to shift from manually handling every release to building and managing the systems that handle releases.
At the time, that shift showed up through Continuous Delivery and related operational practices that later evolved into what we now call platform engineering.
I’m using “NoOps” in that same sense now. Not “ops disappears,” but “ops changes shape.” I expected a reaction. Ops folks are proud of our craft, and rightly so. Reliable operations is hard, and not something developers can do casually with a magical stochastic parrot.
Some response has dismissed this as “AI = vibe coding slop,” but that misses the point. I’ve been making this argument since long before LLMs: many ops teams still hand-craft infrastructure, even when they’re using automation tools. They are still a manual step for routine changes.
Agentic workflows create a chance to push self-service further. Not by encouraging YOLO changes, but by having experts build the platforms, guardrails, and workflows developers can safely use.
I think software delivery workflows will look very different within a few years, especially in higher-performing teams. Infrastructure professionals will still be essential. But our value will be in designing the loop, not being the loop.
New Article: Humans and Agents in Software Engineering Loops
That leads to the question I wanted to explore next: where do humans fit in an agentic delivery workflow?
I wrote Humans and Agents in Software Engineering Loops to work through that.
The key issue is how we govern how agents build a system. Do we give no guidance (“vibe coding”)? Do humans manually inspect every line (“humans in the loop”)? Or do we build systems that shape both outcomes and behavior (“humans on the loop”)?
For anyone who lived through the rise of DevOps, IaC, and Continuous Delivery, this should feel familiar. We stopped patching release artifacts by hand and improved the delivery system itself — tests, checks, and automation — so the next change would be safer by default.
Agentic software engineering looks familiar to me. We’ll build and run systems that produce, deliver, and operate software, including infrastructure code.
Some people argue this won’t work because LLMs are unreliable. But human engineers aren’t deterministic either. We’ve always managed that with a mix of deterministic and non-deterministic elements. That doesn’t go away.
Tools Worth Watching
Infrastructure as Code vendors are starting to adapt for agentic workflows. They’re making their tools easier for agents to use safely and repeatedly in engineering loops.
A few examples worth paying attention to:
Skills for generating Terraform code, refactoring modules, working with stacks, and writing tests (plus Packer support). A natural fit for teams happy in HashiCorp’s ecosystem. The open question is how well this fits teams using alternative packaging and deployment tools with Terraform.
Pulumi skills: Skills focused on migration (Terraform/CDK/CloudFormation/ARM) and Pulumi authoring practices. Useful if you’re considering a move to Pulumi and want agent support during both migration and steady-state development.
Swamp: An agent-oriented CLI and workflow model built for AI-native infrastructure automation from the start. Strong candidate for teams designing end-to-end agentic workflows rather than bolting agents onto existing processes.
Formae: A newer IaC platform with strong emphasis on drift/convergence and explicit agent integration via MCP + skills. Particularly interesting for teams dealing with messy, mixed estates and out-of-band changes.
For most teams, this won’t be a single-tool decision. Terraform and Pulumi skills are pragmatic options for teams with an existing infrastructure codebase. Swamp and Formae are more opinionated, agent-first operating models.
