An AI coding agent is an AI system that can complete software tasks with some autonomy: reading a codebase, planning changes, editing several files, running commands and tests, and iterating on the results. Unlike a code-completion assistant, an agent works toward a goal across many steps with limited human input.
Examples include agent modes in GitHub Copilot and Cursor, Claude Code, and similar command-line and IDE agents. Teams use them for refactors, test writing, upgrades, and increasingly for infrastructure code such as Ansible Playbooks and Terraform modules.
Agents are probabilistic. They can produce code that looks right but uses deprecated modules, unpinned providers or settings that break policy. Steampunk Spotter’s rules can be fed to the agent as context, and the same rules gate its output in CI/CD before execution.
AI coding agents can be used safely for infrastructure code with guardrails: restricted permissions, required review, and deterministic policy checks before any change reaches an execution platform.
