profile

UltimateQA Weekly Newsletter

🤖 AI Agents Are Becoming Real Teammates

Published about 2 months ago • 3 min read

​

​
​Hello, UltimateQA enthusiasts!

Software development is entering a new phase.

AI is no longer just helping you write code — it’s starting to plan, execute, and reason alongside you. Big Tech is racing to turn agents into first-class developers, and the engineers who understand how to work with these systems will move faster, think bigger, and grow further in their careers.

This week’s edition explores what’s changing, why it matters, and how developers can stay ahead as AI becomes a core layer of modern engineering.

⭐ Sponsor

The fastest path to your next promotion?

Temporal is the foundation for the systems (and engineers) that scale. Learn how Durable Execution can propel your career with our definitive guide.

​

🎥 Video of the Week

React got hacked. It's really, really bad.

​

​

👩‍💻 Useful Libraries

OpenHands

An open-source AI agent framework designed to autonomously reason, execute tasks, and interact with real software systems — ideal for agent-driven testing experiments.

Qodo

AI-powered code and test assistant focused on generating meaningful tests, catching edge cases, and improving coverage automatically.

🤖 Latest AI News

Microsoft Foundry Brings Claude into the Enterprise AI Stack

At Ignite 2025, Microsoft introduced Foundry, a unified cloud platform for building, orchestrating, and scaling AI agents. Foundry provides multi-agent runtimes, built-in knowledge retrieval, and one-click deployment across Microsoft 365 and Azure. Crucially, Microsoft expanded its partnership with Anthropic, making the Claude models (Sonnet 4.5 and Opus 4.1) available alongside OpenAI models in Foundry, giving developers true multi-model flexibility within an enterprise-grade platform.

Key Insights

  • Multi-model is now a first-class concept: Developers can choose OpenAI or Anthropic models based on task, cost, or reasoning needs — without changing infrastructure.
  • Agents, not prompts: Foundry is designed for long-running, tool-using agents that plan, execute, and collaborate — not just chat interfaces.
  • Enterprise distribution built-in: One-click publishing to Microsoft 365 means agents can reach real users inside Teams, Outlook, and Office workflows.
  • Career leverage for developers: Skills in agent orchestration, model selection, and cloud-native AI systems are becoming more valuable than framework-specific expertise.
  • Signal from Big Tech: Microsoft is betting that the future of software development will run on agent platforms, not on isolated AI tools.

💬 Quotes of the Week

Kent C. Dodds

“Did you know React Router is adding React Server Components support? It's still experimental, but it's very close to landing, and I think React Router's take on RSC is really great.”

Nikolay Advolodkin

"Stop making your Temporal Workflows wait in line! If your Activities are independent, you can often make your Workflow up to 3x faster just by changing where you block."

🗞️ Article of the Week

21 Lessons from 14 Years at Google

21 hard-earned lessons from 14 years at Google on why real engineering success is less about code—and more about navigating people, ambiguity, and impact.

🎯 Course Spotlight

Temporal for Beginners: Durable Execution Fundamentals

Learn the fundamentals of creating durable applications with Temporal.

💡 Quick Tips & Tricks

  • Treat AI as a Test Collaborator, Not a Tool​
    Use LLMs to reason about test intent, risk, and coverage — not just to generate scripts. This shifts QA from execution to design.
  • Add Semantic Context to Test Failures​
    Store failures with metadata (feature, risk, user flow). LLMs can then cluster failures by meaning rather than stack traces.
  • Use AI for Pre-Commit Quality Gates​
    Before tests run, let AI review code and test diffs to flag risky changes, missing assertions, or unstable patterns.
  • Move Toward Agent-Oriented Automation​
    Experiment with AI agents that decide     what to test based on code changes, rather than blindly running complete regressions.
  • Build AI Literacy as a Career Skill​
    Understanding prompting, agent orchestration, and model limitations is quickly becoming as important as knowing Selenium or Playwright.

ChatGPT Prompt for Test Automation

​

You are a Staff QA Engineer advising someone who wants to grow beyond test execution.
Analyze how AI is changing QA roles and recommend:
1. Which technical skills to prioritize in the next 12 months;
2. How to combine automation, AI, and system design;
3. What types of projects best accelerate career growth;
4. How to position QA experience for senior or staff-level roles.

Use this prompt to turn AI into a career and technical mentor, not just a coding helper.

Did you miss out on our past insights? Dive into the entire library on our page and catch up on all you've missed! 👇

If you find this knowledge useful, don't keep it to yourself—spread the word and share it with friends and colleagues who could benefit, too! 🚀

What did you think of today's edition?

UltimateQA Weekly Newsletter

We elevate the way that the world creates technology!

Unlock the secrets to better software quality! Subscribe to our weekly newsletter and dive into the latest insights on Test Automation, Quality Assurance, Tech, and AI. Stay ahead with practical tips, expert knowledge, and tools to help you deliver fast, flawless IT solutions. Join a community dedicated to mastering quality and innovation!

Read more from UltimateQA Weekly Newsletter

Hello Reader An exclusive live webinar with Nikolay Advolodkin, CEO of Ultimate QA, on Building Modern Applications with AI, designed for DevOps engineers, QA leaders, performance specialists, and product owners. Key insights include: How to build multi-agentic workflows in the modern era How AI tools like v0 and Claude Code are accelerating modern software development. A live end-to-end build of a web application, from concept to production, including testing and CI/CD. How AI-assisted...

4 days ago • 1 min read

Hello, UltimateQA enthusiasts! Today, you will learn how Google’s new Universal Commerce Protocol is standardizing the "agentic web" and why "context engineering" is the decisive skill for the 2026 job market. We also deep-dive into TestSprite’s autonomous validation loop and explore why Gergely Orosz believes AI tools are raising the minimum floor for software engineering quality. ⭐ Sponsor The fastest path to your next promotion? Temporal is the foundation for the systems (and engineers)...

11 days ago • 3 min read

Hello, UltimateQA enthusiasts! Today, you will learn how to leverage Gemini 3 Flash’s PhD-level reasoning, master "Vibe Engineering" for production-grade software, and implement autonomous testing with TestSprite. We also dive into Temporal’s "delegate, don’t think" architectural pattern and provide five high-impact career tips to navigate the 2026 engineering market. ⭐ Sponsor The fastest path to your next promotion? Temporal is the foundation for the systems (and engineers) that scale....

25 days ago • 3 min read