# Ownership, Licensing and Accountability — Coding Agents & AI-Assisted Development

Source: https://www.geekswithgeeks.com/en/coding-agents/t-own

> Remember who is responsible for code an agent writes.

## The human who merges is accountable

An agent is a tool; **the person who accepts and merges the change owns it**, including bugs, security flaws and outages. Practically: review as if a colleague wrote it; do not merge what you do not understand (ask the agent to explain, simplify, or add tests until you do); keep authorship and responsibility visible in commits and PRs. On **licensing and provenance**, models can reproduce patterns from training data, so follow your organisation's policy: some restrict which tools are allowed, require recording AI assistance, or scan for large copied blocks, and license terms for AI-generated code vary by jurisdiction and are still evolving, so check with your legal team for commercial work. On **confidentiality**, know what leaves your machine (prompts and files may go to a provider), choose tools and settings consistent with your data policy, and keep secrets out of reach.

## Understand before you merge

If you cannot explain the change to a colleague, ask for simplification or more tests first.

**Quiz:** Who is accountable for a bug in code an agent wrote and you merged?

- [x] You and your team, as the people who accepted the change
- [ ] Only the AI tool
- [ ] Nobody
- [ ] The compiler

*Answer:* You and your team, as the people who accepted the change. Responsibility stays with humans, which is why review matters.