The Agentic Loop: Reimagining the Future of QA

For as long as most of us can remember, QA has been stuck in a cycle that never quite works. We build scripts, we maintain them, we patch them every time the product changes. We pour hours into frameworks and tools, only to see them break at the worst possible moment. Even with all the progress in automation, QA has remained brittle, expensive, and slow to keep up.

That’s why we’ve been thinking hard about what comes next. The answer isn’t another tool or framework. It’s a shift in how we think about automation entirely. The future isn’t about software that generates test steps—it’s about agents that actually take action, adapt, and improve over time. Agents that don’t just suggest what you should do, but actually go do it.

We call this vision the Agentic Loop. It’s the idea that testing won’t be a linear process anymore, but a continuous cycle where specialized agents collaborate seamlessly:

• Create Agent – generates executable, codeless tests directly against the live application, constantly expanding coverage as the product evolves.
  
  
• Execute Agent – runs those tests across environments, devices, and browsers at scale, capturing detailed evidence like screenshots and video replays and self-healing them at run-time.
  
  
• Diagnose Agent – analyzes results, pinpoints root causes, filters out noise, and surfaces what matters most.
  
  
• Maintain Agent – keeps everything up to date, automatically healing broken tests that could not be self-healed by the Execute Agent, while pruning redundant cases to keep suites lean.
  
  
• Document Agent – continuously updates test documentation, ensuring steps, results, and outcomes remain synchronized with the current state of both the application and the test suite.

Working together, these agents function more like a digital QA team than a set of tools.

Of course, nobody is going to hand the keys over to AI on day one. Autonomy isn’t a switch you flip—it’s something you grow into. We imagine the journey as phases of trust. You start by onboarding your core tests into the system, getting baselines in place, and seeing how the agents behave. From there, they begin acting like copilots—helping, but still under close human review. Over time, as they prove themselves, they take on more routine tasks while humans focus on the critical decisions. Eventually, the relationship shifts into something more like partnership, where the agents handle most of the execution and upkeep, and humans focus on governance, strategy, and exceptions. It’s the same way you bring a new teammate along: guide them, share the work, and then trust them to own it.

That’s the future we see for QA: not a bottleneck, not a cost center, but a real competitive advantage. A world where engineers don’t waste energy chasing broken scripts, but instead spend their time driving innovation and customer value. A world where testing is continuous, resilient, and adaptive because the loop never stops running.

We’re not claiming it’s here today. This is a vision, and it’s one we’re already building toward. Customers using Functionize today can already see parts of it in action through the Create, Execute, Diagnose, Maintain, and Document agents. Over time, those pieces will connect into the full loop. What excites us isn’t just the technology—it’s the chance to change how QA is seen and practiced.

The Agentic Loop is our vision of that future. And if you’re ready to reimagine what QA can be, we’d love for you to take that journey with us.