Agentic coding tools are increasingly capable of generating and submitting pull requests (PRs) to software projects, introducing new forms of human-agent collaboration in software development. While prior studies have examined PR-level outcomes of agent-generated contributions, less is known about the adoption and management of these tools at the project level. This paper analyzes 25,264 agentic PRs from 2,361 popular GitHub repositories to investigate:
- The adoption of agentic coding tools;
- Project-level agentic PR productivity;
- Human-agent collaboration patterns.
The results show that the median repository generates only one to two agentic PRs during a three-month period, indicating that intensive adoption remains concentrated in a small subset of projects. At the same time, small projects (1-5 contributors) exhibit higher participation ratios and average levels of agentic PR activity than medium-sized and large projects. There is substantial variation in project-level agentic PR productivity; while a few projects exceed the industry-reported estimate of 36 PRs per participant during the observation period, most remain below this threshold. Finally, human-agent collaboration is dominated by a single-human oversight model, where one developer reviews and/or modifies the agent's contributions, while multi-human collaboration patterns are uncommon. These findings provide early empirical evidence on how open-source projects organize human oversight around agentic coding tools and suggest that successful integration of agent-generated contributions depends not only on advances in agent capabilities but also on the human and organizational processes that govern their use. As this study captures an early snapshot of agent adoption, future work should continue to track how adoption patterns evolve over time.
Blogger's Review: The rise of agentic coding tools is transforming human-agent collaboration in software development. This research highlights the current state of agent PR adoption and emphasizes the human management processes necessary for effective integration, reminding us to consider organizational behavior alongside technological advancements. As technology matures, achieving more efficient collaboration will be a key challenge.