Every major consultancy now offers agentic modernization, and the pitch is nearly identical: agents read the legacy code, extract the rules, generate the target, automate the tests. Much of it runs on components anyone can buy.

Here is what that pitch skips: translated code compiles, passes its tests, and then breaks on the quarterly batch job, the regulatory calculation, or a rule for policies written before 1998 that exists nowhere except in the original code. Agents read syntax. They don't read purpose.

The bottleneck has moved from generating code to trusting it. That is the part we sell.

A gate sits between every phase, including the legitimate option to stop after Discovery with the report in hand.

At the end of each phase, you have a concrete, usable outcome: a Discovery Report mapping architecture, dependencies, business rules, risks, and open questions; a Design Package defining the target architecture, refined backlog, knowledge base, and migration plan; and working software with equivalence proven wave by wave, rather than asserted at the end. Cutover is rehearsed with rollback documented, and the complete evidence trail captures comparisons, knowledge transfer, and, if needed, the transition to managed services.

This approach tackles modernization's most expensive challenge: understanding the system nobody knows. Agentic reverse engineering turns undocumented, high-risk codebases into a mapped, explained, and prioritized picture before you commit to a rebuild. Across the adesso group, this capability has been proven across technology stacks from mainframe COBOL to AngularJS-era frontends.