Working with AI Agents to Advance Piksel
Developing Piksel covers a lot of ground, from infrastructure and applications to processing satellite imagery. In recent months, with a small team and limited capacity, the Piksel team has started leaning on AI agents to speed up development that was previously done by hand. Unlike an ordinary chatbot, an AI agent can carry out a sequence of tasks using the tools available to it, so it can work through multi-step jobs more effectively.
Muhammad Taufik points to the payoff: an AI agent can grasp complex context, use the tools on hand, and juggle several processes at once. In application development, for instance, it can generate several prototype websites to compare and choose from as needed. That helps the team explore ideas faster, right from the earliest stages of development.
Still, Taufik stresses that an AI agent does not replace the person behind it, because the quality of what it produces depends heavily on how clearly the user frames the context and direction. It can also turn out a lot of convincing-looking output quickly, yet not all of it is relevant or on target, a tendency that has come to be known as "AI slop". That is why the user has to do more than give clear instructions; they need the sense to notice when the AI starts overdoing things or drifting from the goal. This is where a person acts as the quality-control layer, making sure what the AI produces genuinely fits what the development work needs.
One way the Piksel team keeps that in check is by putting guardrails around the AI agent. Before it is used, the agent is configured to follow the project's development conventions, from coding standards to the steps required before a commit. Within those limits, the code it produces stays clean and free of bugs. On top of that, code that piles up becomes a burden to maintain, so the team still needs to understand the code the AI writes.
Elgodwistra Kartikoputro has felt the benefit too. In his view, an AI agent helps users explore a range of possible solutions, especially those just finding their way into development. It can also help identify bugs or errors in the code, explain what is causing them, and suggest fixes the developer can test right away.
AI agents have been a real help in speeding up Piksel's fairly complex development, and they make onboarding easier for team members, even those with limited experience, as long as the agents are guardrailed and follow the development conventions. That is why the Piksel team keeps exploring how far AI agents can be put to use.