Background agent
A coding agent that takes a ticket, works unattended, and comes back with a finished change for review.
What it tells you about a developer
A developer running background agents is doing task specification and code review at volume, which is senior-shaped work. It is a different skill from supervising one agent step by step.
A supervised agent works while a developer watches and approves each step. A background agent is handed a task and left alone: it reads the codebase, makes the change, runs the tests, and opens a pull request. The developer’s job shifts to writing a clear task and reviewing the result. Teams often run several at once, which is why review throughput becomes the limit.