𝗘𝗹𝗲𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗖𝗼𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴
Agentic coding requires a change in how you think. You must move from a coder to an architect.
Here are the four levels of agentic coding:
Level 1: The Passer You paste a request and accept whatever the AI builds. This works for small, one-line changes. It fails at scale. You end up with messy, buggy, or insecure code. You cannot use "the AI wrote it" as an excuse for bad code. You are responsible for every line.
Level 2: The Prompter You give the AI more context. Results look better, but the AI still makes all the architectural decisions. The code might look correct but fail to fit your existing codebase.
Level 3: The Architect This is the bare minimum for professional work. You review the AI plan before any code is written.
- Does the plan follow your standards?
- Does the plan solve the task?
- Is the AI asking clarifying questions? Reviewing a plan is easier than reviewing a massive code diff later.
Level 4: The Process Leader You add verification and structure.
- Use vertical slicing. Break the plan into small, manageable parts.
- Use AI to self-verify code before a human looks at it.
- This catches obvious mistakes and saves your mental energy.
Avoid the trap of fixing small AI mistakes by hand. If you fix a line manually, the AI never learns. Instead, feed the correction back to the AI. Use documentation or memory files to track these lessons.
Transitioning is hard. You might miss the feeling of writing every line yourself. But being an architect lets you build larger solutions faster.
Learning AI is a core skill for developers. Do not get left behind.
Source: https://dev.to/mrpercival/elevating-your-agentic-coding-7l5