ACI-015: The Agentic-Assistive Spectrum

Thesis

AI coding tools exist on a spectrum from assistive (the AI suggests, you accept) to agentic (you delegate, the AI executes). Most developers enter the spectrum at the assistive end and never move beyond it, because the mental model required for agentic work is incompatible with the mental model for assistive work. What moves a developer along the spectrum is practitioner readiness, not tool capability.

Story

GitHub Copilot popularized AI-assisted coding as ghost text: gray suggestions that appear as you type, accepted with Tab. This is the assistive end of the spectrum. The developer drives, the AI predicts the next few tokens. The cognitive model is familiar -- it is autocomplete, just better.