Back office ops · Production

Coinbase uses Sourcegraph Cody to save developers 5-6 hours per week while meeting strict security standards

The problem

Coinbase wanted to adopt AI code assistants to improve developer productivity but faced strict security requirements around code exposure, model training data use, and potential attack vectors in an industry where handling digital assets demands an especially high security bar, at a time when little public data existed on large-scale AI code assistant adoption.

Workflow diagram · grounded in source
1
Security threat model built
validation
“Brady says the team came up with a threat model to identify risks and their severities across AI code assistants in a few key areas”
2
Statistical security experiment
validation
“we designed and conducted an experiment to look for security issues across a number of groups, per PR, per business unit and after comparing our groups we determined using AI coding assistants made no statistically significant difference…”
3
Blind PR security review
human_review
“Brady randomly sampled PRs from these groups, again ensuring statistical significance, and had people review them for potential security issues. The reviews were blind, meaning reviewers didn't know whether the PR was written with or wit…”
4
Cody deployed on Amazon Bedrock VPC
integration
“One of the reasons we felt confident moving forward with Cody is because it runs on Amazon Bedrock. It integrates well with our existing cloud infrastructure. We must have full control over our data and environment to keep our customer d…”
5
Context-aware code generation
ai_action
“It wasn't just suggesting random pieces of code; it generated boilerplate code based on our internal SDKs and frameworks”
Reported outcome

Coinbase developers save roughly 5-6 hours per week using Cody, write code 2x faster, and 75% noted they were more productive in a recent survey.

Reported metrics
Developer time saved per weekroughly 5-6 hours per week
Code writing speed increase2x faster
Developers reporting more productive75%
Reported stack
CodyAmazon Bedrock
Source
https://sourcegraph.com/case-studies/coinbase-speeds-up-financial-systems-innovation
Read source ↗

Frequently asked questions

What did this team achieve with this AI workflow?

Coinbase developers save roughly 5-6 hours per week using Cody, write code 2x faster, and 75% noted they were more productive in a recent survey.

What tools did this team use?

Cody, Amazon Bedrock.

What results were reported?

Developer time saved per week: roughly 5-6 hours per week; Code writing speed increase: 2x faster; Developers reporting more productive: 75% (source-reported, not independently verified).

How is this back office ops AI workflow structured?

Security threat model built → Statistical security experiment → Blind PR security review → Cody deployed on Amazon Bedrock VPC → Context-aware code generation.

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