# Engineering Flashcards

## Card 1

**Q:** In 2026, the primary focus of software engineers shifts from writing code to what activities?

**A:** Orchestrating agents, evaluating output, and providing strategic direction.

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## Card 2

**Q:** How does agentic AI impact the traditional software development lifecycle (SDLC) cycle time?

**A:** It collapses cycle time from weeks to hours.

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## Card 3

**Q:** What is the expected reduction in onboarding time for new codebases in 2026?

**A:** From weeks to hours.

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## Card 4

**Q:** Term: Surge staffing

**A:** Definition: Dynamically shifting engineers on-demand onto tasks requiring deep codebase knowledge.

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## Card 5

**Q:** How do multi-agent architectures differ from single-agent workflows regarding processing?

**A:** They use parallel reasoning across separate context windows rather than sequential processing.

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## Card 6

**Q:** What role does an 'orchestrator' play in a multi-agent system?

**A:** It coordinates specialised agents and synthesises their results into integrated output.

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## Card 7

**Q:** By 2026, what is the anticipated duration for which agents can work autonomously on applications?

**A:** Days or weeks.

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## Card 8

**Q:** How do long-running agents address the issue of technical debt?

**A:** They systematically eliminate it by working through backlogs that humans lacked time to address.

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## Card 9

**Q:** What is the 'collaboration paradox' identified in engineering research?

**A:** Engineers use AI in roughly $60\%$ of work but can only fully delegate a small fraction of tasks.

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## Card 10

**Q:** What type of tasks are engineers most likely to delegate to AI agents?

**A:** Tasks that are low-stakes or easily verifiable.

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## Card 11

**Q:** How does human oversight scale to handle large-scale AI-generated code in 2026?

**A:** By using AI agents to review code for security, quality, and architectural consistency.

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## Card 12

**Q:** The shift in human oversight is from reviewing everything to reviewing _____.

**A:** What matters most.

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## Card 13

**Q:** Which two specific legacy languages are highlighted as gaining support through agentic coding?

**A:** COBOL and Fortran.

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## Card 14

**Q:** What does it mean for the barrier between 'people who code' and 'people who don't' to become permeable?

**A:** Non-engineers can use code to solve problems through AI tools.

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## Card 15

**Q:** How does agentic coding affect the 'full-stack' capabilities of engineers?

**A:** It allows them to work across unfamiliar domains like infrastructure or databases by filling knowledge gaps.

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## Card 16

**Q:** What are the three multipliers driving software development acceleration in 2026?

**A:** Agent capabilities, orchestration improvements, and human experience.

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## Card 17

**Q:** How does total cost of ownership change for organisations using agentic coding?

**A:** It decreases as agents augment engineer capacity and shorten timelines.

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## Card 18

**Q:** What is the primary driver of increased productivity in AI-assisted engineering?

**A:** Increased output volume rather than simply doing tasks faster.

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## Card 19

**Q:** Approximately what percentage of AI-assisted work consists of tasks that would not have been done otherwise?

**A:** $27\%$.

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## Card 20

**Q:** Term: Papercuts

**A:** Definition: Minor issues that improve quality of life but are typically deprioritised in manual development.

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## Card 21

**Q:** What is the benefit of domain experts implementing solutions directly with agents?

**A:** It removes the bottleneck of waiting for traditional engineering teams.

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## Card 22

**Q:** How does agentic coding democratise security expertise?

**A:** It enables any engineer to perform in-depth security reviews and hardening.

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## Card 23

**Q:** What is the 'dual-use' risk of agentic coding in security?

**A:** The same capabilities that help defenders also allow threat actors to scale offensive attacks.

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## Card 24

**Q:** Term: Agentic cyber defence systems

**A:** Definition: Automated systems that detect and respond to threats at machine speed.

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## Card 25

**Q:** Where should security architecture be embedded according to 2026 priorities?

**A:** As a part of agentic system design from the earliest stages.

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## Card 26

**Q:** What is the top priority for organisations to handle development complexity that single agents cannot?

**A:** Mastering multi-agent coordination.

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## Card 27

**Q:** The central theme of 2026 software development is shifting from writing code to _____.

**A:** Orchestrating agents that write code.

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## Card 28

**Q:** What was the numerical accuracy achieved by Claude Code in Rakuten's activation vector implementation?

**A:** $99.9\%$.

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## Card 29

**Q:** How long did it take Claude Code to complete the Rakuten technical implementation task?

**A:** Seven hours.

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## Card 30

**Q:** How many hours has TELUS saved through AI interactions?

**A:** Over 500,000 hours.

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## Card 31

**Q:** What is the average time saved per AI interaction at TELUS?

**A:** 40 minutes.

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## Card 32

**Q:** By what factor did Claude-powered systems increase execution speed at the fintech platform CRED?

**A:** It doubled execution speed.

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## Card 33

**Q:** What level of AI adoption did Zapier achieve across its entire organisation?

**A:** $89\%$.

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## Card 34

**Q:** How did Anthropic's legal team use Claude Code to improve their workflow?

**A:** They built self-service tools to triage issues before they reached the legal queue.

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## Card 35

**Q:** By how much did Anthropic's legal team reduce marketing review turnaround times?

**A:** From two to three days down to 24 hours.

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## Card 36

**Q:** What tool is mentioned as being designed for non-developers to automate task management?

**A:** Cowork.

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## Card 37

**Q:** Single-agent workflows process tasks _____ through one context window.

**A:** Sequentially.

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## Card 38

**Q:** How did Fountain use Claude to staff a fulfillment centre in less than 72 hours?

**A:** Through hierarchical multi-agent orchestration for screening and document generation.

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## Card 39

**Q:** In 2026, building software means orchestrating agents, evaluating output, and ensuring the system solves _____.

**A:** The right problems correctly.

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## Card 40

**Q:** Why is 'taste' still considered a human-centric requirement in software design?

**A:** It requires organisational context and high-level design judgment that AI lacks.

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## Card 41

**Q:** What is the result of 'timeline compression' in software projects?

**A:** Previously unviable projects become feasible, enabling faster responses to market opportunities.

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## Card 42

**Q:** In Trend 7, what is the impact of domain experts implementing solutions themselves?

**A:** Productivity gains extend across the entire organisation.

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## Card 43

**Q:** How do design teams at Zapier use Claude artifacts?

**A:** To rapidly prototype design concepts in real-time during customer interviews.

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## Card 44

**Q:** What is the key difference between treating AI as an incremental tool versus a strategic priority?

**A:** Strategic adopters define what is possible, while incremental users compete by old rules.

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## Card 45

**Q:** How does agentic coding assist research teams who lack development expertise?

**A:** It enables them to build frontend visualisations of their data.

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## Card 46

**Q:** What specific challenge did Augment Code address for an enterprise customer using Claude?

**A:** It reduced a projected 4 to 8-month project to just two weeks.

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## Card 47

**Q:** What are the four demand areas for immediate attention in 2026 priorities?

**A:** Multi-agent coordination, human-agent oversight, extending beyond engineering, and embedding security.

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## Card 48

**Q:** In the evolution of programming, what preceded agentic AI as the most recent abstraction layer?

**A:** Human/machine conversation.

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## Card 49

**Q:** What is the primary goal of keeping humans 'in the loop' in 2026?

**A:** To make human expertise count where it matters most.

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## Card 50

**Q:** How many specialized agents did Fountain's Copilot coordinate?

**A:** Multiple sub-agents for screening, document generation, and sentiment analysis.

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## Card 51

**Q:** What impact does agentic coding have on 'papercuts' in software development?

**A:** It makes addressing minor quality issues feasible because of reduced manual effort.

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## Card 52

**Q:** According to the report, what determines the success of AI collaboration?

**A:** Active human participation, supervision, and validation.

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## Card 53

**Q:** What is the 'paradox' of automation mentioned in Trend 4?

**A:** Effective AI collaboration requires active human participation rather than total removal.

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## Card 54

**Q:** Which organisation used Claude artifacts to prototype concepts that normally take weeks in just days?

**A:** Zapier.

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## Card 55

**Q:** How does agentic coding influence the 'economics of software development' regarding backlogs?

**A:** Long-running agents can systematically eliminate years of accumulated technical debt.

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## Card 56

**Q:** In 2026, engineers describe using AI primarily for tasks where they know what _____.

**A:** The answer should be or should look like.

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## Card 57

**Q:** What defines the 'tectonic shift' in Trend 1?

**A:** The systemic reconfiguration of the SDLC and software engineering roles.

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## Card 58

**Q:** How many custom AI solutions were created by teams at TELUS?

**A:** Over 13,000 solutions.

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## Card 59

**Q:** What is the function of 'automated agentic systems' in machine-speed security?

**A:** Automating detection and response to match autonomous threats.

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## Card 60

**Q:** The value of an engineer's contribution in 2026 shifts to what specific area?

**A:** System architecture design and quality evaluation.

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