Right now, Tidra is in stealth, but one thing we're not secretive about: the tools that we're obsessing over. Since AI agents are the new hotness, and it's hard to separate marketing hype from reality, we've compiled a quick list of what makes our daily lives easier as software developers. Before we get into the top 10 AI agents we're using right now, let's do a quick explanation of what an AI agent is and what it isn't.
An AI agent in software engineering is an autonomous or semi-autonomous software system that uses artificial intelligence techniques—such as machine learning, natural language processing, or reasoning algorithms—to perceive its environment, make decisions, and perform tasks on behalf of developers or operations teams. Unlike traditional automation scripts, AI agents can analyze context, learn from data or feedback, and adapt their behavior over time to achieve goals like improving code quality, optimizing system performance, or streamlining workflows.
In practical terms, AI agents can assist with code generation, debugging, infrastructure management, testing, monitoring, and incident response—acting as intelligent collaborators that reduce cognitive load and increase engineering velocity.
There's been an (over) abundance of focus on vibe coding platforms, so for the sake of this article, we've only included one. We're focusing on AI agents that are tackling specific problems within the SDLC.
Let's just get it out of the way up front. Our one vibe coding-tangential tool is Replit's Agent. What we like about it is the seamless integration with Replit's other features, like Database and Security. It makes spinning up something from scratch a lot smoother.
Shameless plug alert! But in all seriousness, we're drinking our own champagne and using Tidra AI to complete maintenance work like code upgrades and migrations across multiple repos. Because we're a small team, having an agent take care of this tedious work for us while we're building the product has been a big win. Best part? No more tradeoff arguments between product and engineering teams on what gets focus time.
We haven't tried this one yet, but it's on our shortlist. Testigma claims to automate end-to-end testing across various platforms with an AI agent that is controlled by a human.
ChatGPT's Codex agent is useful in the app, but using this agent in the new Atlas browser has been a complete unlock. We can pull up a spec doc, show it a screen in the product, and connect with internal tools and within seconds we have full-blown documentation.
Checkmarx's agent can identify vulnerabilities in code before they reach production, similar to other products. However, where most stop, they've also addressed the remediation problem. Automation will help resolve code issues before they become a big problem.
That's it for now, but if you're using something that should be featured, drop us a line at info@tidra.ai and we'll add it to the list!
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