Development PracticesConference50min
223 Pull Requests in 11 Days: The Recipe for Building Real Software with AI Agents
An AI-agent workflow enabled building an 83,000-line Spring Boot developer UI in 11 days instead of 6.5–8.5 months. The talk explains how to orchestrate multiple agents with specs, tests, and parallel overnight builds to achieve major productivity gains while delivering a new developer console.
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Julien DuboisGitHub
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Thursday, October 8, 09:30-10:20
TBA 7
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I've always wanted to create a developer UI for Spring Boot, but the task was massive. The project I ended up doing has 83,000 lines of code, 116 test suites... The honest by-hand estimate for one experienced developer: 6.5 to 8.5 months.
I did it in about 11 days, shipping version 1 after less than 2 weeks.
Not by typing faster: I didn't even open my IDE. I did this by managing a fleet of AI agents: 223 merged pull requests, around 20 a day, with the agents doing all the scaffolding, the panels and the tests while I architected, reviewed and steered. That's roughly a 12–17× reduction in human effort, as measured from my git history and PR metadata.
This talk is about showing you the recipe for delivering at this speed, using modern AI tools. I'll show you how to run it: write the specifications, the test harness, running agents in parallel... And working differently: prep the agents in the afternoon, let them build overnight, merge the results over coffee the next day.
And as a bonus, we get a great new Spring Boot developer console!
I did it in about 11 days, shipping version 1 after less than 2 weeks.
Not by typing faster: I didn't even open my IDE. I did this by managing a fleet of AI agents: 223 merged pull requests, around 20 a day, with the agents doing all the scaffolding, the panels and the tests while I architected, reviewed and steered. That's roughly a 12–17× reduction in human effort, as measured from my git history and PR metadata.
This talk is about showing you the recipe for delivering at this speed, using modern AI tools. I'll show you how to run it: write the specifications, the test harness, running agents in parallel... And working differently: prep the agents in the afternoon, let them build overnight, merge the results over coffee the next day.
And as a bonus, we get a great new Spring Boot developer console!
Julien Dubois
Julien Dubois is a Java Champion and a Principal Manager at Microsoft. With his team of world-class developer advocates, Julien works directly with the engineering groups to improve how developers can leverage AI using Microsoft and GitHub solutions.
With over 25 years of experience in the Java ecosystem, Julien is best known as the creator of JHipster, an Open Source platform with 22,000+ GitHub stars that revolutionized how developers build Spring Boot applications. His recent work focuses on bringing enterprise-grade AI capabilities to Java through his contributions to LangChain4j and Spring AI.
Julien is a recognized thought leader in the Java community, having spoken at over 200 international conferences including Devoxx, Spring One, and Microsoft Build. He authored Spring par la pratique, the first French book on the Spring Framework, which became a bestseller. His presentations typically feature live-coding sessions and practical workshops that help developers immediately apply new technologies.
With over 25 years of experience in the Java ecosystem, Julien is best known as the creator of JHipster, an Open Source platform with 22,000+ GitHub stars that revolutionized how developers build Spring Boot applications. His recent work focuses on bringing enterprise-grade AI capabilities to Java through his contributions to LangChain4j and Spring AI.
Julien is a recognized thought leader in the Java community, having spoken at over 200 international conferences including Devoxx, Spring One, and Microsoft Build. He authored Spring par la pratique, the first French book on the Spring Framework, which became a bestseller. His presentations typically feature live-coding sessions and practical workshops that help developers immediately apply new technologies.