Agentic Software Development with Claude Code
Why Smarter. Nearly all new Smarter code is now designed, written and tested by coding agents
such as Claude Code, working from the CLAUDE.md file and the
Agent Skills in the repository’s
skills/ folder. Students can study a real code base that has been shaped for agents, and the
written instructions that make them effective, then use them.
Look at. CLAUDE.md, skills/README.md and the SKILL.md file in each skill folder.
Read. Agentic Development.
Exercises.
Give an agent a broad, well-bounded task, such as a new field with tests and docs, and review its pull request as you would a colleague’s. Discuss what it got right, what it got wrong, and why.
Give the same task twice, once with the skills and once without them, and compare the results.
When the agent makes the same mistake twice, write the skill that prevents it.
Discuss responsibility: who is the author of agent-written code, who reviews it, and how to recognise a test that was weakened rather than a bug that was fixed.
Course plans. Three complete, ready-to-teach plans, each with a schedule, graded assignments and rubrics, two capstone projects, recommended texts, further study and technical prerequisites. See Course Formats and Grading for what the formats have in common.
See the Smarter Instructor Guide to install Smarter and set up a class.