10 Lessons for Agentic Coding

What should we do when code is cheap? Lately, this blog has featured a lot of writing about agentic coding. Frontier models are really good at coding these days, much better than they are at other tasks. Coding with agents feels like a preview of the future, a playground for seeing how far we can push agent capabilities. It’s invigorating, rewarding, and deeply weird. I’ve been keeping a running list of tips for agentic coding: guidelines or rules one might give to someone just getting started with Codex, Claude Code, Pi, or any other agent. Ideally each tip is generalizable guidance, relevant to any agentic programming. I’m also looking for durable lessons that will stick around as models and harnesses improve. Below is my current list: 10 Lessons for Agentic Coding. Ten’s a nice round number; a good time to put this out there. To be clear: I take credit only for honing and compiling these guidelines. As Kshetrajna Raghavan said to me today, “It’s crazy how we’re all converging on…