On a sunny summer Thursday, Spiria held its first hackathon entirely dedicated to agentic development. In concrete terms, the goal was to build a solution using agentic development (also known as agentic AI), a technology capable of designing AI systems that can execute end-to-end tasks autonomously (analyzing, deciding, acting, and iterating) without constant human intervention.

Everyone at Spiria participated. Whether their expertise was in software development, finance, or UX/UI design, the event brought together our entire team across Canada. Whether from one of our offices or remotely, each person chose to build one of 11 proposed tools, all designed to address real needs tied to Spiria's operations.

Participants paired up with a tool such as Codex, Claude Code, or GitHub Copilot, and had the support of a team of internal coaches, people who had already developed an expertise in agentic AI.

This experience confirmed one thing: agentic development is already transforming the way software is designed and built.

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Why do this?

Believe it or not, being the CEO of a software development company in the age of AI, especially with the rise of agentic AI, shakes things up. But being passionate about programming and having built a career from it is, for many other passionate people like me, even more confronting.

I still do a lot of development for fun and for internal projects at Spiria, but I obviously don't know every software technology out there. As agentic AI became more sophisticated, I knew I had to try it myself, using technologies I'm less familiar with.

I first tested Codex to build an internal tool for my colleagues in the Culture and Talent department, and within a few hours, in a technology I don't master at all, I created a working prototype. I immediately understood that it was time for me to change the way I code. I can no longer limit myself to only doing what brought me so much intellectual pleasure; it's now up to me to find other sources of stimulation.

The reality is that the last four decades have been filled with revolutions that simplified my life as a developer. Here, agentic AI is changing my day-to-day completely. I knew the whole team needed to experience it for themselves in order to understand it, and to learn it.

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Beyond code generation

AI tools have long been seen as assistants, capable of writing a few lines of code, completing a function, or recalling the syntax of a programming language.

Today's agents go much further.

They can analyze a codebase, modify multiple files, run tests, spot errors, suggest an architecture, generate documentation, and take part in complete development cycles.

This doesn't mean human expertise becomes less important. On the contrary, its role changes and becomes even more decisive.

An agent can produce code quickly. On its own, however, it doesn't understand an organization's priorities, industry-specific constraints, operational risks, security requirements, or the long-term consequences of a technology decision.

This is precisely where the expertise of an experienced team proves its worth.

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Our clients aren't simply chasing novelty

Most of our clients don't ask us to use a technology simply because it's new or trendy.

Above all, they want their solution to work.

• They want it to be secure.

• They want it to be maintainable.

• They want to be able to evolve it.

• They want to avoid depending on a fragile prototype, a single vendor, or a technology choice that will quickly become a liability.

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Agentic development doesn't change these fundamental expectations. Instead, it increases our ability to meet them faster.

Used correctly, agents can reduce time spent on repetitive tasks, speed up the production of first versions, make it easier to explore multiple technical approaches, and improve certain validation processes.

They also allow our teams to spend more time on the aspects that require the most judgment: understanding the problem, defining the right architecture, protecting data, managing trade-offs, ensuring quality, and preparing for the future.

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Speed isn't enough

It would be easy to reduce agentic development to a promise of productivity.

Producing faster is useful, but it isn't enough.

Software that's delivered quickly but is hard to maintain, poorly secured, or poorly suited to real needs remains a bad investment.

The value of agentic development therefore depends on how it's governed.

Agents' responsibilities need to be clearly defined, the tools and data they can access need to be controlled, their decisions need to be validated, rigorous development standards need to be maintained, and their use needs to be integrated into existing quality assurance and cybersecurity practices.

It's also important not to confuse generation speed with delivery speed.

Code is only part of the work. There's still a need to understand requirements, manage dependencies, test critical scenarios, prepare deployment, document decisions, and ensure the solution's continuity.

Agentic development becomes truly compelling when it's integrated into this entire value chain.

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A new way of mobilizing our expertise

Every technological advance has allowed us to focus on more complex problems.

High-level languages, software libraries, development frameworks, cloud services, and automation tools have gradually eliminated a great deal of manual work.

Agentic development is part of this continuity, but its impact could be even greater.

As agents take on a larger share of technical production, value will shift toward the ability to guide them well, evaluate their output, and integrate their work into coherent systems.

There will always be a need to define the right requirements, choose the right paradigms, establish the right constraints, and ensure the different components work together.

There will always be a need to understand users, operations, risks, and business objectives.

That's where Spiria's expertise lies.

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What Spiria brings to agentic development?

Our role isn't simply to plug an AI tool into a project and hope it produces a satisfactory result.

We help our clients determine where agentic AI can genuinely create value.

We can use it to speed up prototype design, modernize an existing application, automate certain tasks, support development teams, improve testing, or explore different solutions more quickly.

But we do it with the same rigor we apply to all our projects.

This means paying particular attention to architecture, security, privacy, code quality, maintainability, observability, and the long-term viability of solutions.

It also means choosing the right level of autonomy.

In some contexts, an agent can carry out tasks very autonomously. In others, it must propose actions that are then reviewed and approved by a person.

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Turning experimentation into lasting value

Our hackathon allowed us to experiment quickly, test our assumptions, and better understand the real capabilities of today's tools.

It also reminded us that an impressive demo is only the starting point.

The real work is turning that capability into reliable, secure, and durable solutions.

That's exactly what our clients expect from us.

Agentic development is opening the door to new ways of building software. It can help us move faster, explore more, and spend more energy on the decisions that truly matter.

But its value doesn't rest on technology alone.

It rests on the expertise of the people who know how to use it, how to govern it, and how to integrate it into a long-term vision.

This is how Spiria intends to approach agentic development: with curiosity, with pragmatism, and with the determination to build solutions that work today and will keep working tomorrow.

And you... How is your company approaching agentic AI?