AI coding agent

An AI coding agent is a model that does not just suggest code but acts: it reads your files, runs commands, edits across your whole project, executes tests and iterates on the results until the task is done. Tools like Claude Code, Cursor and similar agents turn a one-line request into a sequence of real actions inside your codebase, not a single snippet you copy out.

The shift that matters is autonomy. An autocomplete helps you type faster; an agent takes a goal and works the loop, the same way you would delegate a task to a developer who can see the screen and run the terminal. For a founder this means you can hand off whole features, refactors or bug hunts and review the result rather than babysit each step.

Say you keep your product backlog in Linear: you point the agent at a ticket and it writes the code, opens the pull request and moves the issue along, so the spec and the work stay in one loop. Say your app runs on a Supabase database: the agent can read your live schema, write a migration and run it instead of you hand-crafting SQL. Or say a screen needs rebuilding from a Figma file: the agent reads the design and produces the components to match.

The discipline is the same as managing any junior: give it a clear spec, let it work, then check it actually proved the thing works rather than assuming green means correct.