📰 Dev.to · Ivan Magda

Spawning child agents with fresh message arrays and restricted tool sets — delegation that keeps the parent's context clean.

Language models drift after ~5 steps. A Codable todo system with validation constraints and nag reminders keeps the agent on track without changing the loop.

Dictionary-based dispatch, path sandboxing, and the read/write/edit file tools that let the agent work with code — without changing the loop.

One exit condition, one tool, and a growing message array. The entire mechanism that makes a coding agent autonomous fits in a single method.

The agent loop is ~20 lines and never changed across 9 stages. The real complexity? Pipe deadlocks, SIGTERM on Linux, and Swift 6.2 catching data races at compi