Sonar Survey: AI Makes Code Abundant, but Code Confidence Remains Scarce

Verification and governance are critical as agentic software factory adoption is expected to grow sevenfold within a year, yet 76% can't verify code as fast as AI generates it

AUSTIN, Texas, Nov. 12, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Sonar, the global leader in agentic code verification and governance, today announced the release of its 2027 State of Code Developer Survey report. The study, which surveyed 1,026 developers and engineering managers globally, suggests that scaling AI's benefits requires more than high-performing agents: organizations need confidence in what agents ship.

AI now generates or significantly assists an average of 65% of the code developers commit. That work is becoming more autonomous: 34% of respondents expect their teams to create or use agentic software factories within a year, compared with 5% now. But as more organizations mobilize systems of agents to work autonomously across development tasks, teams need to be able to keep pace. Seventy-six percent say they generate AI code faster than they can verify it, and 53% spend more time reviewing code than creating it today (18% before adopting AI tools).

Despite this review burden, AI-generated code is not consistently checked. Only 39% completely agree that AI-generated code is always checked before being committed, even though 94% don't fully trust it. And while 42% say they're very or extremely concerned that well-written AI code makes bugs harder to spot, surprisingly, only 23% have well-defined, AI-specific guidelines or automated checks that set clear standards for AI-generated code. With 76% saying their teams use AI coding tools for business-critical or mission-critical services, building code confidence isn't a nice to have, it's a necessity.

Sonar's 2027 State of Code Developer Survey report highlights four priorities for building code confidence into agentic development:

• Intent: Define the outcome before agents begin. 37% name unclear requirements among their top sources of toil work, and 26% cite correcting or rewriting AI-generated code. Providing explicit business objectives, architecture standards, quality criteria, and security requirements at the start give agents a target to deliver on and teams a basis for assessing their work.
• Guiderails: Guide and govern agents as they work. Teams that give coding agents clear standards and controls are more likely to report an ROI of 50% or more than teams with few controls. Giving agents relevant context and rules as they write code helps them follow coding standards and stay within limits on tool access and permissions.
• Verification: Check every change independently. Seventy-seven percent of developers and engineering managers report that strong verification tools increase their trust in AI code. Independent checks and fixes before release build confidence that code meets standards, rather than trusting the code simply because it looks correct.
• Evidence: Make confidence measurable and auditable. Only 36% say their team measures AI's productivity impact and that they can see the results, and 22% are unsure what return AI coding has delivered. Tracking outcomes and recording what was checked, found, and fixed helps teams assess value and substantiate release decisions.

"AI has made code abundant. The challenge now is building confidence in what ships, as evident by the responses in our latest State of Code report," said Tariq Shaukat, CEO of Sonar. "As seven times more teams expect to build agentic software factories in the next year, they can not rely on having a human in the loop to inspect every line at the end. Instead, confidence needs to be engineered into the factory itself: clear intent, guiderails that guide and govern agents, independent verification, and evidence of what was checked and fixed. After all, the goal is not simply to produce more code. The goal is to ship more secure, reliable software that delivers business value."

To read the full State of Code Developer Survey 2027 report, visit: https://www.sonarsource.com/the-state-of-code/developer-survey-report/ 

About Sonar
Sonar enables organizations to ship agentic code with confidence. Trusted by 75% of the Fortune 100, Sonar reduces outages, improves security, and lowers the cost and risk of agentic software development. SonarQube, Sonar's core platform, verifies over 750 billion lines of code every day, catching bugs, vulnerabilities, and architectural flaws before they reach production. Sonar is relied on for AI code verification and governance by 7M+ developers globally, including teams at Nvidia, ServiceNow, Booking.com, Goldman Sachs, AstraZeneca, and Ford Motor Company. A Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ Leader¹, Sonar is the essential trust layer for the enterprise agentic software factory.

To learn more about Sonar, please visit sonar.com.

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SOURCE Sonar