Transform any product idea into a production-ready MVP in 6 weeks.
This book is the definitive playbook for building software products in the age of AI. It democratizes product development, enabling anyone—from vibecoders to CTOs—to build and ship software using agentic coding. Rather than teaching programming, it teaches product building in an era where AI agents handle the mechanical coding work.
The book promotes the Renaissance Developer model: becoming "good enough at everything" to successfully ship products by combining systems thinking, product vision, design sensibility, and strategic judgment while AI agents handle implementation details.
Key Promise: Use proven patterns from battle-tested CTO experience to go from idea to production in 6 weeks.
🌐 Online (Web): Read on GitHub Pages
📄 PDF Download: Latest Release
📖 Source: Browse the Markdown source in the book/ directory (currently in development)
📋 Planning Artifacts: See how this book was built using its own methodology in the planning/ directory
Part 1: Foundations - Core concepts including the Renaissance Developer mindset, what agentic coding is, architecture principles for AI-friendly systems, digestible interfaces, and understanding new bottlenecks when coding accelerates 5-10x.
Part 2: The Playbook - Complete 6-week workflow from idea to production: brainstorming, product brief, requirements in EARS notation, technical design, implementation planning, testing strategies, deployment pipelines, environment progression, managing AI agents, and post-MVP iteration.
Part 3: Patterns & Tools - Reusable patterns and tools including architecture patterns, specification patterns (EARS, OpenAPI, AsyncAPI), testing strategies for AI-generated code, and the agentic development toolchain (MCP servers, Claude Code skills, code review patterns).
Part 4: Complete Example - Real 6-week project documented end-to-end demonstrating all patterns and validating the timeline with actual code, decisions, and lessons learned.
This book serves a wide spectrum:
- Vibecoders - Zero technical background, want to build software products
- Aspiring Founders - Non-technical founders with product ideas
- Solo Developers - Individual developers shipping complete products
- Small Teams - Startups maximizing velocity and reducing time-to-market
- Engineering Leaders & CTOs - Technical leaders adapting organizations to agentic coding
- Product Managers - PMs wanting to prototype and validate ideas faster
If you want to ship software products faster using AI assistance, this book is for you.
Current Milestone: MVP (Week 2) - Infrastructure setup and Part 1: Foundations
Upcoming Milestones:
- Week 6: v1.0 - Complete first pass of all 4 parts
- Week 12: v1.1 - Refinements, advanced patterns, print-ready
See planning/roadmap.md for detailed timeline and CHANGELOG.md for version history.
This book was created using the very workflow it teaches! The planning/ directory contains the complete genesis workflow artifacts:
genesis.md- The master workflow definition (T001-T006)idea.md→brainstorm.md→brief.md- Ideation to product definitionrequirements.md- Requirements in EARS notationdesign.md- Technical architecture and design decisionstasks.md- Implementation task breakdown (~81 tasks)roadmap.md- MVP roadmap, environment progression, and gantt chart
This transparency demonstrates the methodology works and provides a real reference implementation.
Required Tools:
- Git - Version control
- Node.js (v18+) and npm - For build tools and Mermaid diagram rendering
- Pandoc (v3.0+) - For PDF generation
- Claude Code (optional) - For contributing using the agentic workflow
1. Clone the repository:
git clone https://github.com/[username]/agentic-coding-book.git
cd agentic-coding-book2. Install Node.js dependencies:
npm install3. Verify Pandoc installation:
pandoc --version
# Should show v3.0 or higher4. Install Pandoc (if needed):
Debian/Ubuntu:
wget https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/releases/download/3.1.11/pandoc-3.1.11-1-amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i pandoc-3.1.11-1-amd64.debmacOS:
brew install pandocOther platforms: See Pandoc installation guide
Generate PDF:
npm run build:pdf
# Output: output/agentic-coding-book.pdfRender Mermaid diagrams:
npm run build:mermaid
# Converts .mmd files to PNG in diagrams/Validate links:
npm run validate:links
# Checks for broken internal and external linksValidate frontmatter:
npm run validate:frontmatter
# Validates YAML frontmatter against schemaCheck requirements traceability:
npm run validate:traceability
# Ensures all requirements are traced to contentRun all validations:
npm testWeb (GitHub Pages): [Coming Soon]
PDF: Generate locally with npm run build:pdf
Markdown: Browse book/ directory with any Markdown viewer
Note: Build scripts will be fully implemented in INFRA-004
Contributions are welcome! See .github/CONTRIBUTING.md (coming in INFRA-002) for:
- How to report issues
- Content suggestions
- Improvement proposals
- Community guidelines
agentic-coding-book/
├── planning/ # Genesis workflow artifacts
├── book/ # Book content (Parts 1-4)
├── diagrams/ # Mermaid diagram sources
├── assets/ # Images, styles, templates
├── scripts/ # Build and automation scripts
├── .github/ # GitHub workflows and templates
└── .claude/ # Claude Code skills for book writing
This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
You are free to:
- Share — Copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
- Adapt — Remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially
Under the following terms:
- Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made
See the LICENSE file for the complete legal text.
[Author information - TBD]
Built with Claude Code, demonstrating the agentic coding principles taught in this book.
Special thanks to the Claude Code team at Anthropic for creating tools that make this new way of building software possible.
Status: 🚧 In Development - Infrastructure setup complete, Part 1 content in progress
Next Milestone: Week 2 MVP with Part 1: Foundations complete