{
  "id": 18880607,
  "title": "1.2 billion commits a week, still stuck in review: the four stages of agentic engineering",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/08/1-2-billion-commits-a-week-still-stuck-in-review-the-four-stages-of",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-11-08T06:36:28.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Dev.to",
    "slug": "dev-to",
    "url": "https://dev.to/tiaforge/12-billion-commits-a-week-still-stuck-in-review-the-four-stages-of-agentic-engineering-1jek"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "In October, GitHub processed more than 1.2 billion commits, a 400% increase compared to the previous year and surpassing the entirety of 2025. The pressure of accelerated implementation due to AI adoption shifts the focus elsewhere. A Faros AI study revealed that as teams transition from low to high AI adoption, pull requests spend 441% longer in review. GitHub has broken down a developer's work into four stages: Plan, Build, Verify, and Observe. Each stage examines the capabilities of agents and the necessary human oversight.\n\nIn the Plan stage, humans and agents must gather scattered context, assess trade-offs, and create an implementation plan. Utilizing tools like Copilot in Slack or Teams, the team can effectively collaborate, check assumptions live, and delegate tasks to Copilot for easier work.\n\nDuring the Build stage, agents maintain progress on tasks even when the human is occupied. Session continuity allows continuing a Copilot session on a different device, and cloud sandbox execution ensures tasks run independently. Copilot keeps project knowledge and executes code in isolated environments without affecting other tasks or the user's machine.\n\nIn the Verify stage, humans must allocate their attention wisely to review changes. Stack smaller pull requests, employ code quality checks, and use AI scanning to identify security vulnerabilities or rule violations. Agentic Autofix and Agent Merge can also handle routine fixes and merge once verification passes.\n\nLastly, in the Observe stage, humans assess the deployed change and monitor for any issues or feedback. AI Scan and AI secret detection can proactively identify vulnerabilities and secrets, while Agent Merge can handle failed checks and merge conflicts.",
  "summary": "GitHub took more than 1.2 billion commits in a single week this October — 400% more than a year earlier, and more than the whole of 2025 combined. Now ask yourself: do you feel 400% more productive than last year? Writing software was never only \"writing\". Once AI accelerates the implementation step, the pressure moves somewhere else. A Faros AI study found that when a team goes from low to high…",
  "key_points": [
    "GitHub processed 1.2 billion commits in a week, a 400% year-over-year increase",
    "Pull requests take 441% longer to review as AI adoption accelerates",
    "Four stages of agentic engineering: Plan, Build, Verify, Observe"
  ],
  "editors_take": "The massive surge in code volume driven by AI adoption forces developers to shift their focus from rapid construction toward more rigorous human oversight during the verification and observation stages.",
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}