« Felipe Antolinez »

In my experience, only three things matter for using coding agents effectively:

1. Clarity of mind about what you want.
2. The ability to put it into words precisely.
3. A system to verify the outcome and improve.

The first two are harder than they sound. If you don't know what you want, that's fine, but be conscious of it. Use the agent to gain clarity, don't just let it run when you're still figuring things out.

For the third, give your agent a way to check its own work. A robust feedback loop with type checkers and robust tests turns guessing into learning.

Model choice, prompting tricks, and context management are far less important.

None of this is specific to AI. These are the same skills that make people effective in general: clarity, communication, and the ability to learn from mistakes.

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