Maggie Appleton: Agentic Coding Has Outgrown the Text Box

Agentic coding has outgrown the text box. Maggie Appleton, staff research engineer at GitHub Next, argues that walls of CLI output and AGENTS.md files serve coding agents far better than the humans steering them. She walks through Chopin, the GitHub Next prototype where background agents turn a team's planning chat into a structured plan, and makes the case for agents that prompt you instead of waiting to be prompted.

What we cover:
– Why text-heavy agentic coding tools favor agents over humans
– Boundary objects: what AGENTS.md, skill files and MCP servers get right and wrong
– Multiplayer planning with coding agents in GitHub Next's Chopin
– Human-to-agent handoffs, formal verification and spec-driven development
– Why software quality is rising, not falling, with coding agents
– Which roles still matter: PMs, designers and engineers

Chapters:
00:00:00 - Introduction
00:02:14 - Inside GitHub Next and the Chopin project
00:05:57 - Why solo agents break team alignment
00:07:52 - Why coding agents struggle with design
00:12:16 - Boundary objects: AGENTS.md, skills and MCP
00:18:27 - Planning with coding agents as collaborators
00:26:49 - Multiplayer planning with background agents
00:31:57 - Agent handoffs and spec-driven development
00:37:41 - Quality, craft and who decides what to build
00:44:29 - Starting a career in agentic coding

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Should coding agents be prompting you more? Tell us in the comments how your team plans agentic coding work today.