Simon Willison launches Agentic Engineering Patterns: a new guide to coding with agents
Software Engineering in the Agentic Era
Simon Willison has started a new project, Agentic Engineering Patterns, a collection of coding practices for the era of coding agents like Claude Code and OpenAI Codex. These agents can generate and execute code, enabling independent iteration. Willison distinguishes agentic engineering from vibe coding, positioning it as professional engineers amplifying their expertise. The first two chapters cover the cheapness of writing code and red/green TDD. He plans to publish 1-2 chapters weekly, and emphasizes that all writing is his own, not AI-generated.
I’ll be using LLMs for proofreading and fleshing out example code and all manner of other side-tasks, but the words you read here will be my own.