Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Agentic validation needs different infrastructure

Previously, I described some core approaches to validating agent written code: feedforward and feedback techniques. Feedforward techniques are about avoiding errors up front, for example by coming up with better prompts and planning strategies. Feedback gives agents a signal that they have actually achieved a task. Feedback is a key part of common agentic patterns like Ralph loops or the /goal commands in Codex and Claude Code: keep working until some known condition passes.

Run CI Tests Without Pushing: Microbuilds with Chunk sidecars

AI coding agents write code faster than your pipeline can catch mistakes. What if the agent could validate against CI before you ever push? In this 5-minute demo, we set up CircleCI's Chunk CLI and run a microbuild using Chunk sidecars, secure Linux microVMs that spin up in ~1 second in your CircleCI account, mirror your working directory (no git push required), and give your agent CI-grade feedback while it's still in context.

Stop pushing broken code to CI: Wire Chunk sidecars into agent hooks

AI agents can write code faster than any developer. But for most teams, the feedback loop hasn’t kept pace. The agent generates code, pushes it to CI, and minutes later a full pipeline run catches a simple linting error or a failing unit test. By then the agent has moved on. Getting back to a working state means rebuilding context from scratch and burning tokens just to fix something that should never have shipped in the first place.

Run your first microbuild in 5 minutes

AI coding agents produce code faster than most teams can validate it. Without a validation step between the agent and CI, every problem gets caught after the push, and feedback arrives long after the agent has lost context. Agents need consistent feedback while they’re working so that small failures get fixed locally and CI stays focused on moving code into production.

Same team, but building more ft. Chris Kelly of Augment Code

Most teams obsessing over token costs are measuring the wrong thing. The real savings from AI aren't in lines of code written faster. They're in the coordination overhead that disappears when fewer humans need to align before anything gets built. Chris Kelly, Head of Product at Augment Code, joins Rob to cover why prototypes have replaced specs, how agents enable dynamic team capacity the way cloud replaced over-provisioned servers, and what "good code" even means when your primary reader is an LLM. In this episode.