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An Exploratory Study of Agent Plans for Agentic AI Coding Tools in Open-Source Software

Authors Muhammad Auwal Abubakar , Seyedmoein Mohsenimofidi , Jai Lal Lulla , Jie M. Zhang , Christoph Treude , Sebastian Baltes , Matthias Galster

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Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Software and its engineering → Software creation and management
  • Software and its engineering → Software configuration management and version control systems
  • Computing methodologies → Artificial intelligence
Keywords
  • Agentic AI Coding Tools
  • Configuration Mechanisms
  • Plans

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Abstract

Repository-level configuration artifacts allow developers to provide guidance for agentic AI coding tools, e.g., Claude Code, Gemini. Although prior research has examined repository-shared context files that capture project-level instructions and conventions (e.g., AGENTS.md files), little is known about more task-oriented artifacts such as Agent Plans. We present an exploratory study of Agent Plans in open-source software repositories, examining how plan files are preserved, which development activities they support, and what information they provide to guide agent execution. We screened 36,710 GitHub repositories belonging to engineered software projects and identified 85 Markdown plan files from 10 repositories. Within this concentrated corpus, Agent Plans supported several kinds of software engineering work, including maintenance, design, construction, quality-related work, and process support. They also provided task-oriented execution guidance, most commonly through implementation steps, concrete files and locations, and testing and validation information. Overall, repository-preserved Agent Plans in these tool-specific directories appear to be a narrow but informative artifact for studying task intent and execution guidance in human-agent workflows.

Cite As Get BibTex

Muhammad Auwal Abubakar, Seyedmoein Mohsenimofidi, Jai Lal Lulla, Jie M. Zhang, Christoph Treude, Sebastian Baltes, and Matthias Galster. An Exploratory Study of Agent Plans for Agentic AI Coding Tools in Open-Source Software. In 20th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 394, pp. 54:1-54:14, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026) https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.ESEM.2026.54

Author Details

Muhammad Auwal Abubakar
  • University of Bamberg, Germany
Seyedmoein Mohsenimofidi
  • Heidelberg University, Germany
Jai Lal Lulla
  • Singapore Management University, Singapore
Jie M. Zhang
  • King’s College London, United Kingdom
Christoph Treude
  • Singapore Management University, Singapore
Sebastian Baltes
  • Heidelberg University, Germany
Matthias Galster
  • University of Bamberg, Germany

References

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