What are the current best practices for coding agents?

Current best practices for coding agents center on structured context management, skill-based specialization, and iterative agentic loops. Corroborated practices include using CLAUDE.md files to document project conventions ¹⁷⁸, building context with 7 components to boost productivity 8× ¹⁸², employing agentic loops (plan → act → verify) for self-correction and autonomous shipping ^262,518, delegating roles across models for cost/performance ¹²⁵, and visually managing agents ²⁶⁶. The tooling landscape is anchored by Claude Code, with Hermes ^321,372, iFixAi ¹⁰⁵, and Freellmapi ¹¹⁰ as notable supporting tools. Many emerging tools and practices lack broad corroboration and should be tested cautiously.

1. 1Add a CLAUDE.md file documenting project conventions, rules, and context to prevent over-engineering and hallucinated APIs ¹⁷⁸.
2. 2Build context with 7 components—memory, instructions, examples, files, previous actions, tool results, state—to increase Claude Code productivity 8× ¹⁸².
3. 3Employ agentic loops: plan → act → verify → repeat for self-correction; Anthropic writes >40% of code this way ²⁶² and Claude Code’s loop/goal features enable overnight autonomous shipping ⁵¹⁸.
4. 4Start with predefined workflows and add autonomy only when the task demands it ²²⁷.
5. 5Use Claude Code to automate video editing—jump cuts, captions, chapter titles, etc. ²²⁰.
6. 6Install the Find Skills skill to discover and apply the best skills for any goal ¹⁸³.
7. 7Use OpenAI’s codex-plugin-cc to let Claude Code delegate tasks to Codex in the same terminal ¹⁴¹.
8. 8Delegate roles across models: Fable for design, Opus for heavy reasoning, Sonnet for execution to optimize cost and performance ¹²⁵.
9. 9Use loops instead of single prompts to automate work ¹¹².
10. 10Point Claude Code at an Obsidian vault to turn notes into a searchable wiki ¹¹¹.
11. 11Use Freellmapi to aggregate free tiers of 16 LLM providers behind one local API ¹¹⁰.
12. 12Run iFixAi to red-team agent configurations with 45 tests and independent grading ¹⁰⁵.
13. 13Rely on Claude Fable 5 to generate complex interactive visualizations from code without external assets ¹⁰³.
14. 14Use the ai-website-cloner template to reverse-engineer live websites into clean code ⁴²⁸.
15. 15Build agent businesses by first doing the work manually, then automating the learned process ³⁸¹.
16. 16Run multiple Claude Code sessions in TMux with agent teams and Git worktree isolation for adversarial code reviews and parallel feature testing ³⁷⁶.
17. 17Optimize Hermes agent costs by model choice, background tasks, and context usage ³⁷².
18. 18Let Hermes Agent learn repetitive workflows from a single demonstration and execute them autonomously ³²¹.
19. 19Set up a pixel office: turn each Claude Code session into a visual character with speech bubbles, file tracking, and permission visualization ²⁶⁶.
20. 20Have Claude Code read and modify an open-source trading bot’s code to create a profitable automated strategy ⁴⁴⁶.
21. 21Use TouchDesigner, MediaPipe, and Claude Code to build real-time hand-controlled 3D applications ¹⁸⁰.
22. 22Copy-paste from Anthropic’s official prompt library for task-specific prompts ¹⁷⁶.
23. 23Use Claude Code with Sonnet 5 to produce a professional website in 18 minutes ¹³².
24. 24Use Claude Code to automate cross-market spread detection across 50 markets ¹⁷³.
25. 25Use Claude Code to generate a complete ad in 2 minutes at $0.80 cost (116, emerging).
26. 26Use Claude Code to build a workflow that records iPhone camera motion via ARKit and passes it to Seedance for AI video generation (143, emerging).
27. 27Use Claude Code to identify YouTube niches with little competition by analyzing search data (419, emerging).
28. 28Use Claude Code to autonomously run a full content strategy loop for Instagram growth (442, emerging).
29. 29Use Claude Code to generate a complete game that runs on a custom $50 handheld device (619, emerging).
30. 30Use Claude Code to generate a functional VST plugin from a single prompt in under 2 hours (566, emerging).
31. 31Use Claude Code to automate Reddit scraping and analysis for customer pain points and ad copy (720, emerging).

Core tool: Claude Code ^111,112,125. Specialized agents: Hermes learns workflows from one demo ³²¹ and can be cost-optimized ³⁷²; ECC bundles 60 agents and 231 skills (177, emerging). Security: iFixAi red-teams agents ¹⁰⁵. Cost reduction: Freellmapi unifies 16 free LLM tiers ¹¹⁰; converting code to PNG images can cut token costs by ~80% (230, emerging). Multi-agent orchestration: codex-plugin-cc ¹⁴¹, Orca (137, emerging), TMux + Git worktree ³⁷⁶, ruflo (519, emerging), Cmux (578, emerging), Commonly 2.0 (617, emerging). Visual management: pixel office setup ²⁶⁶, CNVS (322, emerging). Browser automation: Browser Use CLI 3.0 (217, emerging). Website cloning: ai-website-cloner ⁴²⁸. Other emerging tools: Dotcode ¹³⁰, Morph ¹²⁴, Agent-Reach ^114,443, Lev8 ¹¹⁷, Ghost MCP ⁴⁸³, Google ADK CLI (172, emerging), Paperclip (174, emerging), OpenAlice (122, emerging), TradingAgents-CN (123, emerging), VideoAgent (574, emerging), OpenMontage (657, emerging). Many tools are early and lack extensive corroboration.

Many practices are marked as emerging with only single corroboration and should be considered unverified until further evidence. Examples include: using Claude Code to generate a complete ad in 2 minutes at $0.80 cost ¹¹⁶, building a workflow that records iPhone camera motion via ARKit for AI video generation ¹⁴³, identifying YouTube niches with little competition ⁴¹⁹, autonomously running a full content strategy loop for Instagram growth ⁴⁴², generating a complete game that runs on a custom $50 handheld device ⁶¹⁹, generating a functional VST plugin from a single prompt in under 2 hours ⁵⁶⁶, and automating Reddit scraping and analysis for customer pain points and ad copy ⁷²⁰. These claims lack broad corroboration and may not generalize.