Story Arena: A Multi-Agent Environment for Envisioning the Future of Software Engineering

Abstract

What better way to understand the impact of AI on software engineering than to ask AI itself? We constructed Story Arena, a multi-agent "writer's room" in which multiple AI agents, independently imbued with a position statement on the future of software engineering, converse with each other to develop a shared vision. They then use this shared vision to collaboratively construct a design fiction that depicts this vision in narrative form. We present "The Code of Trust," a short fiction that investigates themes of human comprehension, trust, content ownership, augmentation vs. replacement, and uncertain futures in human-AI co-creation.

8 pages. Appeared in the 2025 Workshop on The End of Programming (as we know it): Envisioning Radical Re-Conceptualizations of Co-Coding with AI, held in conjunction with the Aarhus 2025 Decennial Conference, August 18-22, 2025