A4 Refereed article in a conference publication

Not All Problems Are Nails, Not All Tools Should Be Hammers: A Position Paper on Agent Usage in Software Engineering Tasks;




AuthorsRytilahti, Juuso; Puhtila, Panu; Weerakoon Oshani; Kaila, Erkki; Mäkilä, Tuomas;

EditorsN/A

Conference nameInternational Workshop on Agentic Engineering

Publication year2026

Book title AGENT '26 : Proceedings of the 2026 International Workshop on Agentic Engineering

First page 112

Last page119

ISBN979-8-4007-2399-5

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1145/3786167.3788413

Publication's open availability at the time of reportingOpen Access

Publication channel's open availability Open Access publication channel

Web address https://doi.org/10.1145/3786167.3788413

Self-archived copy’s web addresshttps://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/508595782

Self-archived copy's licenceCC BY

Self-archived copy's versionPublisher`s PDF


Abstract

The use of AI-powered tools in software engineering (SWE) has increased significantly, primarily due to advancements in large language models (LLMs). LLMs can generate code from natural language prompts and even produce complete software artifacts. Along with these changes comes a new class of people working in the software industry: citizen developers. Citizen developers generally have no technical background but can produce technical applications or artifacts with the aid of LLMs. Moreover, LLM-powered AI agents are being used across many application areas, and there is a trend towards using such agents to solve all problems. These changes merit consideration of how, by whom, and when SWE tasks should be automated. Throughout this paper, we argue that some problems should be solved with LLMs, while others should not. We point out that the developers' backgrounds matter as much as the problems to be solved in this regard. The perspectives we offer in this paper suggest that future research should consider the limitations of both the users' knowledge and the technology behind the tools.


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Funding information in the publication
This work has been supported by FAST, the Finnish Software Engineering Doctoral Research Network, funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture, Finland.


Last updated on 28/05/2026 09:37:47 AM