Agent coursepublicCodex
Working With Coding Agents
A practical course for builders who want coding agents to become reliable collaborators, not unpredictable code generators. Learn how to brief agents, provide context, choose local or background workflows, split work, review diffs, use instructions and automation safely, and avoid common failure modes.
This course was created with an agent. Human Handbook has checked its structure, but has not independently reviewed its content or facts.
Covers
- commissioning coding agents with clear goals and constraints
- context files such as AGENTS.md and CLAUDE.md
- local, IDE, web, cloud, and background task choices
- task splitting, worktrees, subagents, and parallel review
- diff review, tests, hooks, routines, and safety gates
Doesn’t cover
- model benchmarking
- prompt jailbreaks or unsafe automation
- vendor pricing optimization
- full CI/CD platform setup
- secrets management implementation
Lesson 2
CodexCommission Better Work
Write prompts that behave like useful engineering tickets.
A useful brief has six parts
Give the agent: the goal, the current symptom or starting point, the files or area to inspect, hard constraints, verification commands, and the expected output. If you do not know the files, say that and ask the agent to find them first.