2026-10-05T21:32:55Z https://drops.dagstuhl.de/oai

oai:drops-oai.dagstuhl.de:28022 2026-10-05T06:44:05Z ddc:004 open_access

An Exploratory Study of Agent Plans for Agentic AI Coding Tools in Open-Source Software Abubakar, Muhammad Auwal Mohsenimofidi, Seyedmoein Lulla, Jai Lal Zhang, Jie M. Treude, Christoph Baltes, Sebastian Galster, Matthias Agentic AI Coding Tools Configuration Mechanisms Plans 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. Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik Muhammad Auwal Abubakar and Seyedmoein Mohsenimofidi and Jai Lal Lulla and Jie M. Zhang and Christoph Treude and Sebastian Baltes and Matthias Galster 2026 Is Part Of LIPIcs, Volume 394, 20th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM 2026) InProceedings Text doc-type:ResearchArticle publishedVersion application/pdf doi:10.4230/LIPIcs.ESEM.2026.54 urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-280222 https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ESEM.2026.54 eng https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode