Developer Experiments With Delegating Full TDD Cycle to an AI Agent

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A software developer who previously used AI agents only for production code decided to explore delegating the entire test-driven development (TDD) cycle — including test writing — to an AI agent. The shift was inspired by a presentation from Lada Kesseler on augmented coding, which demonstrated that an LLM could follow the red-green-refactor TDD flow while keeping the process visible and inspectable. Using a prompt shared by Kesseler as a foundation, the developer built a reusable TDD skill and deployed it via Codex CLI, with the agent pausing for approval at each step of the cycle. The developer later refined the workflow so the agent could complete a full TDD cycle before handing back control, reducing friction while still allowing frequent human intervention. The experiment highlighted how AI-assisted TDD can preserve process transparency without requiring the developer to retain direct control over every step.

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