SD Times News Digest: SmartBear BearQ, Chainguard Agent Capabilities – March 18, 2026
SmartBear releases BearQ’s QA system
SmartBear today announced the release of BearQ, an agent QA system that can detect how applications are performing to ensure their integrity.
According to the company, BearQ, which is part of SmartBear’s Application Integrity Core product, can independently test how applications work and adapt to any code changes, testing only what is important. The ability to adapt makes this solution an evolution from brittle automation scripts or pre-defined test scenarios.
“The AI-driven gap between the speed of software development and the ability to test the resulting applications is widening, creating greater opportunities for application failures that harm companies, consumers and industries,” said Dan Faulkner, CEO of SmartBear, in the announcement. “BearQ will be the key independent testing and testing solution for the industry to close these gaps and deliver improved application integrity. SmartBear’s long history of innovation in software quality and testing enables SmartBear to address this disruption in the SDLC.”
SmartBear’s latest study, Closing the AI Software Quality Gap, found that 90% of respondents use AI coding tools, but 70% say software quality is suffering. In addition, more than three-quarters of respondents are concerned that testing will not be able to keep up with rapid AI code development, nine out of 10 survey respondents have used AI coding tools. Seven out of 10 are concerned that quality is already suffering, 60% have experienced quality problems in the past year, and 68% are concerned that testing will be a bottleneck in software delivery.
BearQ also includes monitoring queues and context controls that allow developers to define which agents to validate, and how testing and testing align with business goals.
To learn more about BearQ and apply for GA Early Access, click here.
Chainguard announces Open Agent Skills
Chainguard today announced Chainguard Agent Skills, a catalog of robust AI agent skills that are constantly maintained. Agent capabilities, which automatically import capabilities from open registry sources, enable developers to extend the use cases of their agents without extending their attack surface. Those capabilities are measured against a set of security and quality rules, hardened using Chainguard reconciliation agents, and published with a complete audit trail. That assessment is important, because without consent controls or oversight, agent capabilities have become the latest target of supply chain attacks.
AI agent capabilities are small, modular command sets that extend what an AI agent can do. Developers include capabilities to add capabilities such as browser automation, PDF processing, database access, and code generation workflows. agent capabilities have become the latest target of widespread supply chain attacks.
“Container Graphics showed us how quickly software artificial intelligence can become a supply chain threat when adopted and trusted at scale. AI agent capabilities are evolving even faster,” said Dan Lorenc, CEO and co-founder, Chainguard. “As AI agents are embedded in the software development lifecycle, the capabilities that make up their behavior become part of the supply chain itself. With Agent Capabilities, Chainguard brings continuous resiliency and assured integrity to that layer, so organizations can build with AI on a secure foundation.”
Chainguard Agent Skills are available in beta. To be among the first to try Chainguard Agent Skills, visit
