# Agentic Coding: Run Coding Agents Like an Operator

How to actually drive coding agents at work: pick a harness, control the context window, write rules and skills that stick, wire hooks and MCP, and run whole tickets through parallel multi-agent workflows.

**Level:** Intermediate

You ship code and use an agent casually. This course is the machinery under it:
what the model sees, what you can put in front of it, and how to run many agents at
once without losing control of the result.

It is the onboarding I give engineers joining my team, written down.

## What you'll be able to do

- Pick a harness and a subscription on purpose
- Read your own session: every tool definition, rule file and skill that loaded
- Cut your context window to what the model needs, and spot when it goes bad
- Keep one set of agent rules every harness on your machine reads
- Write skills the agent loads only when it should
- Move format, lint and checks off the model into hooks
- Route every external service through one tool layer, not a dozen MCP servers
- Run a real ticket end to end: research, plan, parallel implementation, review,
  browser QA, pull request

## What this course assumes

You write code for a living and have opened
[Claude Code](https://claude.com/product/claude-code) or
[Codex](https://openai.com/codex/) once. Examples use Claude Code, and say where a
feature is Anthropic-only.

## How it works

Every lesson is **free and open**, no account needed. Read them in order; each
builds on the one before, and your progress saves in your browser.

## Lessons

01. [Choose Your Coding Agent](https://andrey-markin.com/courses/agentic-coding/choose-your-coding-agent.md)
   Pick a harness by working backwards from the subscription that is allowed to drive it, and know which features you lose when you switch.
02. [How the Model Actually Works](https://andrey-markin.com/courses/agentic-coding/how-the-model-actually-works.md)
   The model is stateless and emits only text: see the messages array your harness resends every turn, and how to budget a plan with a weekly cap.
03. [Rules Files and Scope](https://andrey-markin.com/courses/agentic-coding/rules-files-and-scope.md)
   Write your agent rules once in ~/.agents/AGENTS.md, symlink every harness to it, and know exactly which files each harness loads and in what order.
04. [Own Your Context Window](https://andrey-markin.com/courses/agentic-coding/own-your-context-window.md)
   Read what your agent actually loads, cut the tool definitions and bundled extras you never use, and start fresh before quality drops.
05. [Skills: Teach the Agent Your Way of Working](https://andrey-markin.com/courses/agentic-coding/skills.md)
   Package your repeated instructions as skills: the SKILL.md format, progressive disclosure, prompt vs router vs script-backed shapes, and how to install them safely.
06. [Hooks: Move Work Off the Model](https://andrey-markin.com/courses/agentic-coding/hooks.md)
   Wire format, lint and guardrail commands into agent lifecycle events so the machine does them every turn instead of the model remembering to.
07. [MCP Without Tool Bloat](https://andrey-markin.com/courses/agentic-coding/mcp-without-tool-bloat.md)
   Connect Jira, Notion, PostHog, Stripe and the rest through one gateway, so hundreds of endpoints cost a handful of tool definitions.
08. [Voice Dictation](https://andrey-markin.com/courses/agentic-coding/voice-dictation.md)
   Dictate prompts instead of typing them: a local speech-to-text app for free, Groq for cents, and one rules line that makes the agent forgive homophones.
09. [Dynamic Workflows](https://andrey-markin.com/courses/agentic-coding/dynamic-workflows.md)
   Type ultracode and the model writes a script that spawns sub-agents: phases in sequence, agents in parallel, parent context window almost empty.
10. [Workflows in Action](https://andrey-markin.com/courses/agentic-coding/workflows-in-action.md)
   One real ticket end to end: a research prompt that produces a reviewable plan, an execution prompt that ships it, and the diff review that catches what the summary hides.

## Links

- Course page: https://andrey-markin.com/courses/agentic-coding
- All courses: https://andrey-markin.com/courses.md
- Contact: https://andrey-markin.com/#contact