Who Delegates to AI? Evidence from Agent Configurations in Github
On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Software engineering coding agents
Abstract (arXiv)
A growing body of literature measures the extent to which occupations are exposed to AI, yet existing measures capture where AI could perform tasks rather than whether workers have actually adopted it. We introduce a distinct tier of exposure, delegated exposure, which records whether a worker has committed a task to AI by embedding it into a structured workflow. We operationalize this concept through the Agentic Adoption Index (AAI), measuring how closely an occupation's tasks align with the agentic routines that practitioners have built and shared. Using semantic embeddings of roughly 888,000 agent skill specifications from public GitHub repositories, we compute their similarity to nearly 18,000 O*NET task statements and aggregate these scores to the occupational level. We present three main findings. First, the occupations where task delegation concentrates differ sharply from those identified as most vulnerable by pre-AI automation frameworks. Second, the AAI aligns more closely with measures of technical capability than with measures of current conversational LLM use. Third, for occupations requiring a bachelor's degree or less, the AAI increases alongside average wage levels; however, this relationship reverses for occupations requiring a master's degree or higher, where adoption declines among higher earners. These patterns replicate on an independently collected corpus of agent skills from the Manus Skills Marketplace. This lower adoption among highly educated, high-earning workers may reflect tasks that inherently resist advance specification or professional discretion over the pacing of workflow codification. Distinguishing these mechanisms will require longitudinal measurement.
Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Software engineering coding agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 16 of its 41 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 19 Aug 2026.
Builds on
16 of 41 references.
References · 16
- 2019Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networkscited by 9,170
- 2025From LLM Reasoning to Autonomous AI Agents: A Comprehensive Reviewcited by 149
- 2025Which Economic Tasks are Performed with AI? Evidence from Millions of Claude Conversationscited by 96
- 2025Future of Work with AI Agents: Auditing Automation and Augmentation Potential across the U.S. Workforcecited by 38
- 2025Working with AI: Measuring the Applicability of Generative AI to Occupationscited by 19
- 2025The Adoption and Usage of AI Agents: Early Evidence from Perplexitycited by 15
- 2024Generative AI is already widespread in the public sectorcited by 10
- 2022Word Embedding for Social Sciences: An Interdisciplinary Surveycited by 3
- 2024Follow the money: a startup-based measure of AI exposure across occupations, industries and regionscited by 2
- 2025The Iceberg Index: Measuring Skills-centered Exposure in the AI Economycited by 2
- 2026Agentic AI and Occupational Displacement: A Multi-Regional Task Exposure Analysis of Emerging Labor Market Disruptioncited by 2
- 2026Critique of Agent Modelcited by 2
4 more
- 2026AI-exposed jobs deteriorated before ChatGPTcited by 1
- 2026Jobs' AI Exposure Should Be Measured from Evidence, Not Model Priorscited by 1
- 2026Who Uses AI? Platform Selection and the Measurement of Occupational AI Exposurecited by 1
- 2026How AI Agents Reshape Knowledge Work: Autonomy, Efficiency, and Scopecited by 1
Built on by
Not cited yet.
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026Unaccountable Delegation, Fading Skills: Mapping the Risks of Workplace AI Agents
- 2026JobBench: Aligning Agent Work With Human Will
- 2026From Registry to Repository: How AI Agent Skills Are Written, Adapted, and Maintained
- 2026Scanning the Harness: A Repository Study of Configuration Exposures in AI Coding Agents
- 2026Augmentation with Dilution: A Large-Scale Empirical Study of Human Contributor Ecosystems After AI Coding Agent Adoption
- 2026The atomic structure of work: a micro-action instrument reveals two-pole AI occupational exposure and its decade-scale polar inversion ↗
- 2026The Work Behind Delegation: A Framework for Supervising AI Coding Agents
- 2026"What Did It Actually Do?": Understanding Risk Awareness and Traceability for Computer-Use Agents