Real-world feedback on coding workflows with AI agents — and on team adoption. No sandbox demos — Symfony and TypeScript in production.
An agentic workflow isn't about "using AI to code faster" — it's a restructuring of how you break down, delegate, and verify work. The real gains come from three practices: decomposing tasks into verifiable units, actively managing context, and treating the agent like a competent junior who needs precise instructions.
Route mechanical tasks to budget or free models (MiniMax 2.5 via Kilo Gateway, Gemini Flash), reserve premium models for reasoning. Result: mechanical tasks (~65% of volume) cost nothing, with no perceived quality loss.
A good coding agent prompt has three components: what you want (precise task), how to validate it (verifiable exit condition), and what you don't want (explicit constraints). Most disappointing results come from instructions missing one of the three.
Anthropic's official CLI turned full ecosystem — skills, hooks, sub-agents, MCP. The lock-in is still real: I came back with my eyes open.
Kilo Code — VS Code-first agent, multi-provider, Apache 2.0. Native LSP, mode marketplace, team config via Git. Tested 2 months in production.
Terminal-first coding agent, open-source MIT, multi-provider. The natural choice for Neovim/tmux workflows — tested 4 months in production.
Across 267 tracked sessions, 62% last under 10 minutes. Long sessions (>1h) account for only 15% of the total. The micro-session is the real productive pattern — not tool underuse.
Across 128 auto-scored Claude Code sessions, 68 had a "wrong_approach" friction — 53%. The agent's first instinct is wrong half the time. This isn't a problem to fix, it's a pattern to integrate into the workflow.
Kilo Code CLI is a fork of OpenCode with Kilo Gateway on top. In practice, the TUI is identical, custom commands work the same, and migration took 15 minutes. The real difference: free models via the gateway change the workflow economics.
Agentic development terms — opinionated definitions, illustrated with real-world examples.
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