33: Ship Happens (When Agents Code)
Thu Jan 15 2026
At Spotify, we're doubling down on background coding agents. The goal is to scale code migrations and boost developer productivity beyond our existing automation system. Built on top of Fleet Management and supercharged by Claude Code, these agents make their own code changes and pull requests. What could possibly go wrong?
Engineers Jo Kelly-Fenton, Aleksander Mitic, and Max Charas join host Dave Zolotusky to unpack how we’ve merged thousands of AI-generated PRs while keeping codebases consistent and secure. They’ll dig into what it takes to let agents touch production code at scale: sandboxing and security, handling context windows, wiring into CI, and building verification loops that still trust humans more than agents.
You’ll hear real-world failure modes (like agents “fixing” tests by deleting them), how using an “LLM as a judge” flags sketchy diffs before they land, and how engineers and PMs are now triggering agents directly from Slack for migrations, documentation fixes, and feature flag rollouts.
It’s a candid look at what increasing reliance on AI-based tooling means for the future of engineering — and for safely shipping code at speed.
Learn more about our journey with background coding agents:
1500+ PRs Later: Spotify’s Journey with Our Background Coding Agent (Part 1)
Background Coding Agents: Context Engineering (Part 2)
Background Coding Agents: Predictable Results Through Strong Feedback Loops (Part 3)
AI Engineer Paris 2025: Rewriting all of Spotify's code base, all the time
Read what else we’re nerding out about on the Spotify Engineering Blog: engineering.atspotify.com
You should follow us on Twitter @SpotifyEng, LinkedIn, and YouTube!
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At Spotify, we're doubling down on background coding agents. The goal is to scale code migrations and boost developer productivity beyond our existing automation system. Built on top of Fleet Management and supercharged by Claude Code, these agents make their own code changes and pull requests. What could possibly go wrong? Engineers Jo Kelly-Fenton, Aleksander Mitic, and Max Charas join host Dave Zolotusky to unpack how we’ve merged thousands of AI-generated PRs while keeping codebases consistent and secure. They’ll dig into what it takes to let agents touch production code at scale: sandboxing and security, handling context windows, wiring into CI, and building verification loops that still trust humans more than agents. You’ll hear real-world failure modes (like agents “fixing” tests by deleting them), how using an “LLM as a judge” flags sketchy diffs before they land, and how engineers and PMs are now triggering agents directly from Slack for migrations, documentation fixes, and feature flag rollouts. It’s a candid look at what increasing reliance on AI-based tooling means for the future of engineering — and for safely shipping code at speed. Learn more about our journey with background coding agents: 1500+ PRs Later: Spotify’s Journey with Our Background Coding Agent (Part 1) Background Coding Agents: Context Engineering (Part 2) Background Coding Agents: Predictable Results Through Strong Feedback Loops (Part 3) AI Engineer Paris 2025: Rewriting all of Spotify's code base, all the time Read what else we’re nerding out about on the Spotify Engineering Blog: engineering.atspotify.com You should follow us on Twitter @SpotifyEng, LinkedIn, and YouTube!