AI didn't make code cheap. it made bad code lethal. Matt Pocock: "Software fundamentals matter more than ever" AI in a good codebase ships gold. AI in a bad codebase ships garbage. framework mastery doesn't compound. fundamentals do. if you're starting with AI agents, build these 5 patterns before... anything else: > Tool Use Design Pattern. tool calling is the core of every useful agent. > Agentic RAG. grounded answers over hallucination. maps to real products. > Planning Design Pattern. agents that break a goal into steps before acting. > Multi-Agent Design Pattern. orchestrator-subagent is the only shape that ships in production. > Building Trustworthy AI Agents. reliability, safety, knowing when not to use one. this article covers what to learn, build, and skip in AI agents in 2026. bookmark and read this today. repo with 500 more in commentsshow more

500 AI Agents project here:

Full talk by @mattpocockuk on @aiDotEngineer here:

Crzy

fundamentals are gonna stay

You've captured exactly why we're seeing such divergent AI outcomes. the quality of underlying architecture determines whether AI accelerates value or amplifies technical debt at scale.

banger my man

Without these 5 patterns, no work in AI will be successful

Love it man you cooking with all bangers

banger right here

You’re 100% right about this. I’ve seen too many teams cut corners on fundamentals just because AI can crank out code fast. I actually just started practicing these 5 agent patterns last week, this post is exactly the reminder I needed.

这句话很准。AI放大的是系统本身的质量，好的工程基础会被加速，坏的抽象也会被更快复制。基础功反而更值钱了。

That 5th pattern — Building Trustworthy AI Agents — is where most builders get burned in production. Error cascades, retry storms, context loss when the LLM 429s. Put together a playbook on exactly those failure modes:

bad code used to tax maintainers slowly. agents let it scale its revenge with much better throughput

Interesting

a solid architecture is the only thing standing between a working product and a total mess

the “orchestrator-subagent is the only shape that ships” take is spicy… what breaks first when you skip it

AI amplified one thing more than anything else: Architecture debt. Bad foundations used to slow teams down. Now they poison the output of the agents operating on top of them. That’s why so many AI products demo well but collapse operationally.

bad code used to tax maintainers slowly. agents let it scale its revenge with much better throughput

drop F vibe coding. fundamentals or your agent ships trash 🙄

good one