At work, I use Claude, ChatGPT and Copilot, depending on the task I have. Sometimes I create my task plan using one agent, another one helps with writing the code and another one does the code review. Sometimes I use the same agent for all three steps, so I don't really have a flow that's set in stone.
One thing I did notice though is that, all agents perform very well when it comes to generatig code for greenfield projects but the quality of their output decreases the more I work with legacy code. This is something that my colleagues also noticed, so I assume my experince is not unique.
Since our code base is 100% legacy, I do use the agents for generating code, but what I use them for the most is explaining code. And that saves me a lot of time and frustration. In the past, if I was lucky enough and the person that wrote a very complicated piece of code would still be working in the company, I would ask them to help me understand their reasoning.
Now I do not really need to do that. If the documentation is not sufficient, I can always ask an agent to explain the logic behind some code and almost everytime it comes back with a reasonable explanation. Sometimes the explanation is really silly or it's a straight up hallucination but I think that's where our common sense should kick in: while reading something the agent outputed, by looking at the code we should be able to tell if the explanation makes sense or not.
What are you using your agents the most?
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