7 field notes from the AI Agent Conference in NYC

One of our team members attended the recent AI Agent Conference, dreading the inevitable hype and "100x your engineering team with this one simple prompt". But to his surprise, there were actually some interesting takeaways (see full article in comments), including: 1️⃣ Agents need controlled places to work - no one is happy to unleash them on production systems during development and testing. This is where tools like WireMock (API simulation), LocalStack (cloud emulator), or Veris (AI sandboxing). 2️⃣ Access is still a blocker - both on the agent side (tools, APIs, permissions) and on the developer side (who has access to agents) 3️⃣ Security, cost, and observability are moving up the list. People are asking questions like: * Who can use them? * What can they access? * How do we know what they did? * How much does it cost? How do we prevent runaway usage? 4️⃣ API catalogs are starting to look like agent infrastructure. If agents are going to work across internal systems, they need a map of the environment. 5️⃣ Developer enablement may matter more than raw capability. Teams should bake best practices into the development environment instead of relying on every developer to remember every step. 6️⃣ Structured work may be the best starting point. AI may be more ready for compliance work and structured evaluation than for a lot of open-ended consumer experiences. 7️⃣ The SDLC is still early. There was a lot of energy around code generation, but less evidence that teams are deeply automating later software delivery steps like review and testing. See comment for link...