8 AI Coding Agents That Actually Ship Production Code in 2026

Most "AI agent" articles list frameworks for building agents. This isn't that. Using an AI coding agent and building one are completely different problems. Using one means file system access, real test suites, actual PRs, production config files. The bar is higher than "it autocompletes well." I've been watching teams use — and abandon — these tools on real codebases. Not demos. Not toy repos. Here's what's actually moving the needle in 2026. How I picked these I'm not ranking by GitHub stars or