Working Effectively with AI Coding Agents

7 lessons I learned on how to effectively work with coding agents: 01: Context, not control Give the AI context about what you want to achieve, then let it figure out how. Don't micromanage the steps; describe the destination. It's smarter than you think, and often smarter than your specific instructions. 02: Push until it breaks Don't accept the first result. Keep pushing, asking for more, requesting variations. Push it until it fails at something. Only then do you truly understand its limits. The limits are further than you think. 03: Put in the reps There's no magical prompt template or shortcut that will suddenly make you an expert. Like everything else in life, you just need to put in the reps. The more you build, the better your intuition becomes for what works. 04: Try everything. Waste tokens. Do playful experiments. Do things that would seem like overkill. Try silly ideas. The best discoveries happen when you're not being sensible. Tokens will get cheaper over time. Curiosity is the real currency. 05: Build in public The best textbook is Twitter, and the best teachers are people who are slightly more advanced than you and share their work openly. Share your progress, even the messy parts. You'll learn faster and find your people. 06: Make it fun There have been times I've literally chuckled at Claude's output. It's charming, creative, and genuinely surprising. Lean into the joy. If it stops being fun, you're probably being too serious about it. 07: If you can talk, you can vibe code Don't be intimidated by the terminal. If you can articulate what you want to build, you can vibe code. The hardest part isn't the coding. It's coming up with something worth building, and making people care once you've built it.