What AI is teaching us about CI

A platform team encountered a challenge when an AI agent overwhelmed their merge queue with automated pull requests, delaying high-priority feature merges. This incident highlights a broader trend of AI tools becoming mainstream, with 90% of developers using them according to the 2025 DORA report, creating new pressures on Continuous Integration (CI) systems. AI tools have expanded the possibilities for software development but have also introduced complexities requiring CI systems to be scalable, adaptive, programmable, and governed effectively. Platform teams must now manage AI-driven workflows, ensuring that machine-generated work complements human oversight without compromising delivery speed. Buildkite addresses these needs by offering a scalable CI architecture that includes machine-scale concurrency, adaptable pipelines, and strong governance, along with new agentic workflow components that facilitate AI integration into CI/CD pipelines. These components enable teams to trigger pipelines from external events, use AI models for dynamic steps, and handle tasks like summarizing builds and diagnosing errors, empowering platform teams to leverage AI in diverse ways.

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