Autonomous coding agents are not the future. They are already . Agents can now design, build, test, and deploy an entire full-stack feature from front end to back end without a human touching the keyboard. here The reality is that while this technology has advanced quickly, Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) have not traditionally focused on the cost of tools used in development. Under current U.S. GAAP, you can capitalize certain third-party software costs if they are a direct cost of creating software during the application development stage.

Historically, though, developer tools were treated as overhead because their cost could not be directly tied to capitalizable work. Under GAAP, work that meets the criteria should be capitalized. When agents perform that work, they should be treated no differently than salaried engineers. Read more