The Code-Only Agent

The Code-Only Agent

When Code Execution Really is All You Need

If you're building an agent, you're probably overwhelmed. Tools. MCP. Subagents. Skills. The ecosystem pushes you toward complexity, toward "the right way" to do things. You should know: Concepts like "Skills" and "MCP" are actually outcomes of an ongoing learning process of humans figuring stuff out. The space is wide open for exploration. With this mindset I wanted to try something different. Simplify the assumptions.

What if the agent only had one tool ? Not just any tool, but the most powerful one. The Turing-complete one: execute code.

Truly one tool means: no `bash`, no `ls`, no `grep`. Only execute_code . And you enforce it.

When you watch an agent run, you might think: "I wonder what tools it'll use to figure this out. Oh look, it ran `ls`. That makes sense. Next, `grep`. Cool."

The simpler Code-Only paradigm makes that question irrelevant. The question shifts from "what tools?" to "what code will it produce?" And that's when things get interesting.

execute_code : One Tool to Rule Them All

Traditional prompting works like this:

> Agent, do thing

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