2026/06/04 by David Williams, Angelos Evripiotis, Serkan Kirbas +4
#cs.SE
In this industrial experience paper, we present Pomona, a lightweight agentic tool that utilises agent skills for continuous code quality improvement. Inspired by the Kaizen (TM) philosophy, Pomona automates a cycle of discovery and incremental repair: a Scanning skill identifies tasks and prioritises them in a backlog, while a Repair skill generates small, easily reviewable pull requests (PRs). This design enables frequent, low-risk improvements while maintaining engineer trust and reducing technical debt. We evaluated Pomona at Bloomberg through a three-month team deployment and a questionnaire distributed to senior engineers. The results are promising: 32/39 PRs (82.1%) were merged with a median time-to-close of just over two hours. Moreover, 10/12 surveyed engineers expressed a desire to adopt Pomona, praising its small diff sizes and focus on code quality. Since our evaluation, another team has adopted Pomona. We conclude with actionable insights for deploying agents in industry.