The ZazenCodes Newsletter
Learn how to use coding agents like the top 1%.
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The Agentic Engineer
How to win as a software engineer in the agentic era.
A 10-page playbook for becoming the AI expert on your team. Agents now write the code, so your value moves to understanding these systems and running them well. It walks from the model underneath, through the harness and the context you give it, to teams of agents and systems that keep working without you.
- 01
What actually changed
Agents write the code, engineers manage agents, and context is the new codebase.
- 02
The model
Next-token prediction, how coding models are trained, and big models versus distilled ones.
- 03
The harness
What Claude Code and Codex wrap around the model: tools, effort levels and token caching.
- 04
Context engineering
Agent skills, progressive disclosure, MCP and plugins.
- 05
Multi-agent development
Subagents, pairing models, handoffs, worktrees and remote agents.
- 06
Autonomy
The five things every workflow needs to run without you: spec, scripts, state, gates and an exit.
- 07
Keep learning
How to keep up when 99% of the daily news is noise.
Also included
Video Mind Maps — the canvas I walk through at the start of each video, sent as high-resolution PDFs to review after you watch.
A Developer's Guide to Agentic Workflows — Stop prompting and start specifying. The four parts of an agentic workflow, the five rules that keep one working six months later, and a worked example you can clone and run.
MCP Obsidian Cheat Sheet — a quick reference for setting up and using MCP with Obsidian without hunting through docs.
Zen Guide for Data Developers — a practical guide to staying clear, focused, and grounded while doing technical work.
Second Brain Notes Access — selected notes from my personal knowledge system, shared as a reference library for subscribers.
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