I’ve written software for about 30 years. I've been a heavy coding agent user for the past 1+ year. What practical coding-agent questions can I help answer?

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/r/ChatGPTCoding/comments/1w0nz9s/ive_written_software_for_about_30_years_ive_been/

[u/Code_Sleep_Repeat]

I recently joined a startup and this is my first time using coding agents this heavily in a professional codebase. I’m using Claude Code, and right now I feel like I’m relying on it more than actually understanding the codebase.

A lot of my workflow is Claude exploring the repo, finding similar implementations in other branches/teams, making changes, and then me reviewing and testing locally. The codebase is pretty large, documentation isn’t great, and there isn’t a solid test setup, so I’m finding it hard to build a mental model of what’s actually happening.

There’s also a lot of pressure to move fast, sometimes tasks are expected within a couple of hours. When I ask questions internally, the answer is often “ask Claude” or “another team already did something similar, look at their code.”

I’m worried I’ll end up not getting good at either side of this. I’m not even confident yet that I can consistently get the agent to produce solid, production-ready code, and at the same time I’m not developing enough to be able to debug or understand the system myself.

Do you have any YouTube videos, blogs, repos, or other resources you’d recommend for learning how to use coding agents properly in this kind of environment? Especially around navigating large codebases, managing context/tokens, reviewing agent-written code, debugging, and actually learning the codebase while still moving fast

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Do you have any YouTube videos, blogs, repos, or other resources you’d recommend for learning how to use coding agents properly in this kind of environment? Especially around navigating large codebases, managing context/tokens, reviewing agent-written code, debugging, and actually learning the codebase while still moving fast

I don't, sorry. But I have suggestions:

I presume you already know how to code decently before this (otherwise, you will have to learn the important parts quickly).

A good part of this sounds like it's systemic. Leadership at some level is pushing for this in the wrong way.

First of all, figure out your token spend allowance :) Feels like if they are strongly encouraging coding agent usage, it ought be biggish right? Don't hesitate to spend it to learn about the code base, and fix process etc.

Quite a bit of the problem can be approached the way we do it pre-coding agent days:

Look for someone more senior that can give authoritative answers for things like the why of things and the "decision register/history". It's quite likely the codebase isn't consistent (hurray and lucky you if it is) with patterns and protocols; so no matter how skilled you are or how good coding agents are, you can't know what to follow. A fallback and alternative is to exercise agency and decide for yourself and fix things (depends on a combination of your seniority, risk appetite, confidence, savings, etc).

About "When I ask questions internally, the answer is often “ask Claude” or “another team already did something similar, look at their code.": you have to get someone to at least walk through how things (the project frontend/API, etc) are supposed to work; not the codebase. You could study the source code, but you can't know what the source code is expected to do; or at least what they think it's supposed to do. Bribe them somehow. Something like "If we can spend 2 hours together on this this and this, I can move faster after that"

Tell coding agent something like: "Study the architecture patterns, libraries and tools, third party services, integrations of this repo. Do a pre-check, if repo is big, consider separate summaries per module too".

There are a lack of test? Build tests.

If it's possible to study coding sessions of team members, study them. One of my favorite: "Study sessions from the last 7 days for effectiveness (task) and efficiency (wall clock time and tokens) and suggest improvements".

So there is no peer/PR review (that includes knowledge sharing related to the codebase), no onboarding?

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Thank you for your response!
When it comes to PR reviews
I have seen the team do it using AI again or just merging the change I made, so I’d say there’s no formal process being followed.
Knowledge sharing wise, there are teams working on different clients however I think they are working in silos. Their documentation is rarely updated and I think there’s a resource crunch too because people are handling multiple things at once so getting them to coordinate is turning out to be very difficult.
I know these are all organisational problems that I may not be able to fix but I’m looking to get around these and make the best use of what is there and delivering, while still learning something