{Insights}
Oct 16, 2025
by alchemain team
Why AI Coding Assistants Can't Fully Own Dependency Upgrades
AI coding assistants are powerful tools that boost developer speed by reducing manual work and suggesting vulnerability fixes. They can even propose version bumps, run tests, and attempt to patch basic breakage.
However, dependency upgrades remain a major roadblock for delivery, and here's why:
Failures Happen Outside the Editor: An AI coding assistant sees a project file, but it doesn't understand the build lifecycle or the operational environment. Dependency failures don't happen in the code editor; they happen during compilation, test execution, or when a new library clashes with your actual runtime (e.g., a sudden requirement for JDK 21 on a production system running JDK 17).
Engineers Become the Automation: When a simple version bump cascades into transitive conflicts, CI chaos, or toolchain shifts, an engineer often must step in. They become the "human in the loop", constantly prompting the assistant, debugging incorrect answers, and manually untangling broken builds. The cost of breakage lands squarely on the critical path.
The Difference Between Helping and Owning
The distinction lies in responsibility and execution:
Feature | AI Coding Assistant | Alchemain’s 00felix |
|---|---|---|
Execution Context | Developer's editor / Local environment | In the build pipeline |
Responsibility | Helps the engineer solve the problem (Engineer owns the result) | Removes the problem entirely (Owns the full lifecycle) |
Action | Suggests a fix; relies on human to validate | Upgrades, compiles, runs tests, reads real failure signals, and loops to fix breakage automatically. |
While a coding assistant can help chase down a vulnerability and suggest a fix, it still needs a chaperone to watch the build and validate the change.
00felix runs within the pipeline, absorbing the full cost of breakage. It returns either a merge-ready pull request or a precise explanation of why the automation can't proceed. This means:
• Upgrades no longer block sprints or derail releases.
• Security patches do not become fire drills.
• Technical debt doesn't accumulate silently.
Developers are freed from fixing the same dependency issues repeatedly. Keeping dependencies current is vital to shipping software, and the right platform should own the full lifecycle, so your product teams don't have to.
