MSR 2026
Mon 13 - Tue 14 April 2026 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
co-located with ICSE 2026

This program is tentative and subject to change.

Mon 13 Apr 2026 12:20 - 12:25 at Oceania V - Session 1-A: AI Agents & Automation

GenAI-based coding assistants have disrupted software development. The next generation of these tools is agent-based, operating with more autonomy and potentially without human oversight. Like human developers, AI agents require contextual information to develop solutions that are in line with the standards, policies, and workflows of the software projects they operate in. Vendors of popular agentic tools (e.g., Claude Code) recommend maintaining version-controlled Markdown files that describe aspects such as the project structure, code style, or building and testing. The content of these files is then automatically added to each prompt. Recently, AGENTS.md has emerged as a potential standard that consolidates existing tool-specific formats. However, little is known about whether and how developers adopt this format. Therefore, in this paper, we present the results of a preliminary study investigating the adoption of AI context files in 466 open-source software projects. We analyze the information that developers provide in AGENTS.md files, how they present that information, and how the files evolve over time. Our findings indicate that there is no established content structure yet and that there is a lot of variation in terms of how context is provided (descriptive, prescriptive, prohibitive, explanatory, conditional). Our commit-level analysis provides first insights into the evolution of the provided context. AI context files provide a unique opportunity to study real-world context engineering. In particular, we see great potential in studying which structural or presentational modifications can positively affect the quality of the generated content.

This program is tentative and subject to change.

Mon 13 Apr

Displayed time zone: Brasilia, Distrito Federal, Brazil change

11:00 - 12:30
Session 1-A: AI Agents & AutomationTechnical Papers / Industry Track / MSR Program at Oceania V
11:00
10m
Talk
Toward Linking Declined Proposals and Source Code: An Exploratory Study on the Go Repository
Technical Papers
Sota Nakashima Kyushu University, Masanari Kondo Kyushu University, Mahmoud Alfadel University of Calgary, Aly Ahmad University of Calgary, Toshihiro Nakae DENSO CORPORATION, Hidenori Matsuzaki DENSO CORPORATION, Yasutaka Kamei Kyushu University
Pre-print
11:10
10m
Talk
IntelliSA: An Intelligent Static Analyzer for IaC Security Smell Detection Using Symbolic Rules and Neural Inference
Technical Papers
Qiyue Mei The University of Melbourne, Michael Fu The University of Melbourne
Pre-print File Attached
11:20
10m
Talk
Model See, Model Do? Exposure-Aware Evaluation of Bug-vs-Fix Preference in Code LLMs
Technical Papers
Ali Al-Kaswan Delft University of Technology, Netherlands, Claudio Spiess University of California, Davis, Prem Devanbu University of California at Davis, Arie van Deursen TU Delft, Maliheh Izadi Delft University of Technology
Pre-print
11:30
10m
Talk
A Match Made in Heaven? AI-driven Matching of Vulnerabilities and Security Unit Tests
Technical Papers
Emanuele Iannone Hamburg University of Technology, Quang-Cuong Bui Hamburg University of Technology, Riccardo Scandariato Hamburg University of Technology
Pre-print
11:40
10m
Talk
PhantomRun: Auto Repair of Compilation Errors in Embedded Open Source Software
Technical Papers
Han Fu , Sigrid Eldh Ericsson AB, Mälardalen University, Carleton University, Kristian Wiklund Ericsson AB, Andreas Ermedahl Ericsson AB; KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Philipp Haller KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Cyrille Artho KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
11:50
10m
Talk
Promises, Perils, and (Timely) Heuristics for Mining Coding Agent Activity
Technical Papers
Romain Robbes CNRS, LaBRI, University of Bordeaux, Théo Matricon CNRS, LaBRI, University of Bordeaux, Thomas Degueule CNRS, Andre Hora UFMG, Stefano Zacchiroli LTCI, Télécom Paris, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, Palaiseau, France
Pre-print
12:00
10m
Talk
From Logic to Toolchains: An Empirical Study of Bugs in the TypeScript Ecosystem
Technical Papers
TianYi Tang Simon Fraser University, Saba Alimadadi Simon Fraser University, Nick Sumner Simon Fraser University
Pre-print
12:10
10m
Talk
Are We All Using Agents Now? An Empirical Study of Core and Peripheral Developers’ Use of Coding Agents
Technical Papers
Shamse Tasnim Cynthia University of Saskatchewan, Joy Krishan Das University of Saskatchewan, Banani Roy University of Saskatchewan
12:20
5m
Talk
Context Engineering for AI Agents in Open-Source Software
Technical Papers
Seyedmoein Mohsenimofidi Heidelberg University, Matthias Galster University of Canterbury, Christoph Treude Singapore Management University, Sebastian Baltes Heidelberg University
Pre-print
12:25
5m
Talk
A Blueprint for Trustworthy Code Annotation at Scale: An LLM-Powered Pipeline for Industrial Software Analytics
Industry Track