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What is Agentic Development Security?
Agentic Development Security (ADS) is the new operating model: prevent risk, fix what's already there, and operate the response across the AI SDLC, automatically and at machine speed.
Agentic Development Security
ADS · a category named by Forrester, April 2026
AppSec was built for people. Agents changed the pace.
Traditional AppSec was built for human-paced development. Three things broke that.
Decisions, not alerts.
In Forrester's framing, ADS covers the whole loop, from stopping risk to fixing it, and keeps watching from code to production.
See how Heeler matches up →[ADS] treats security decisions as autonomous, policy-driven actions, not just alerts handed to overburdened teams.
The attack surface now starts in the agent.
ADS covers everything an agent touches, from the first prompt to the running service.
Agent tooling
Skills, MCP servers, hooks and instruction files, trusted by default.
Agent sessions
Prompts, tool calls and commands, as the agent works.
Code agents write
More code than people can review, flaws included.
Supply chain
Packages, GitHub Actions and container images they pull in.
Runtime and cloud
What is deployed, what is exposed, what it reaches.
Context first. Then determinism. Then agents.
Agents guarding agents is not enough. ADS decides from context, the same way every time, and agents carry it out.
- Context
Know the context
Code, cloud, business and people, in one model.
CodeCloudBusinessPeople - Determinism
Decide deterministically
Same answer every time: most dangerous first, everything fixed.
ReachabilityExposureImpactThreat - Agents
Agents execute
Agents ship fixes and enforce gates. People merge and grant exceptions.
FixesGatesMerge-ready - Proof
Prove it
Every decision, action and agent session, on the record.
DecisionsFixesExceptions
How ADS differs from the tools you already run.
Scanners find and posture tools track. ADS adds prevention, context and the fix.
| Capability | SAST | SCA | ASPM | ADS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Finds flaws in code or dependencies | Code | Packages | From other tools | Yes |
| Covers agent tooling and sessions | No | No | No | Yes |
| Prevents in the agent | No | No | No | Yes |
| Decides with runtime and business context | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Fixes, not just finds | Some | Some | No | Yes |
Heeler delivers ADS in three layers.
Guide the agent, guard the merge.
MCP Server, Agent Skills, CLI and PR Guardrails.
See Prevent →Triage and fix, automatically.
Autotriage, SCA Auto-fix and SAST Auto-fix.
See Fix →Run security from prompt to cloud.
Owners, SLOs and workflows across code, agents and cloud.
See Operate →ADS capabilities, mapped to Heeler.
Each capability below, and the Heeler products that deliver it.
Questions about ADS, answered.
Is ADS the same as ASPM?
No. ASPM collects findings from other tools and manages posture. ADS also stops risk in the agent and fixes it, at machine speed.
Does ADS replace SAST and SCA?
No, it builds on them. Finding flaws still matters, but detection alone does not lower risk. ADS adds the context to rank findings and the fixes to close them.
What is an agent file, and why is it a risk?
Agent files are the skills, hooks, MCP server configs and instruction files a coding agent loads. Agents trust them by default, so a compromised instruction becomes compromised software.
Why does fixing matter more than finding?
A finding is a to-do. Nothing is safer until the code changes and ships, and agents now write vulnerable code faster than any team can fix it by hand.
Who defined the category?
Forrester named Agentic Development Security in April 2026. It spans prevention, detection, prioritization, remediation, policy, supply chain protection and continuous intelligence.
How does ADS handle code that people write?
The same way. Every commit and pull request gets the same checks, ranking and fixes, whether a person or an agent wrote it.
See Agentic Development Security in action.
Connect a repo and watch Heeler prevent, prioritize and fix risk, in your first session.
