What Is the Most Minimal Agentic Coder You Can Write?

By Ben Houston, 2025-03-21 Agentic coding has recently gained traction as an innovative approach where autonomous software agents leverage advanced Large Language Models (LLMs) to perform tasks traditionally done by developers. These agents can autonomously write code, execute commands, and debug software, dramatically enhancing developer productivity. But what's the simplest way you can create a functional agentic coder? I explored this challenge and built mycoder-mini, an extremely minimal agentic coder in just around 200 lines of TypeScript code. The entire codebase is available in this GitHub repository, specifically within the single TypeScript file here. How Does mycoder-mini Work? At its core, mycoder-mini leverages an LLM (specifically, Anthropic's Claude 3) to generate shell commands based on a user's prompt. Here's the essence of its functionality in code: const runAgentLoop = async ( initialPrompt : string ) => { const tools = [ shellCommandSchema , finishedSchema ] ; c ... Read full article.