Eight trends defining how software gets built in 2026
January 21, 2026 at 12:00 AM
Summary
TL;DR
Anthropic argues 2026 software development shifts from “writing code” to orchestrating coding agents, with humans supervising, validating, and owning architecture.
What actually happened
Anthropic analyzed industry patterns and framed “eight trends” across foundation, capability, and impact categories.
Their key claim: teams aren’t removing engineers; they’re reallocating human effort to architecture and strategic decisions.
Internal research says AI is used frequently but rarely fully trusted for end-to-end delegation.
Case studies describe agentic coding used on large codebases and across whole organizations.
Key numbers
Developers use AI in roughly 60% of their work.
Developers “fully delegate” only 0–20% of tasks.
Rakuten tested a 12.5-million-line codebase.
Claude Code ran 7 hours of autonomous work.
Rakuten reported 99.9% numerical accuracy.
TELUS built 13,000+ custom AI solutions; shipped code 30% faster; saved 500,000+ hours.
Zapier reported 89% AI adoption and 800+ internal agents.
Why this was hard
Real workflows require supervision and validation, not just code generation.
Balancing agent autonomy with quality is a core constraint.
Agents must navigate complex, large codebases and still produce correct results.
How they solved it
Treat coding agents as collaborators rather than replacements.
Shift engineers toward coordinating agents and making architecture/system design decisions.
Scale oversight via AI-automated review (as a stated priority area).
Focus on multi-agent coordination as an immediate priority.
Extend agentic coding beyond engineering teams (as a stated priority area).
Embed security architecture from the earliest stages (as a stated priority area).
What changed
Rakuten completed a complex vLLM-related implementation with reported 99.9% numerical accuracy.