Build Systems, Not Code - Angie Jones, Agentic AI Foundation
Building agentic systems requires the same engineering disciplines (systems thinking, workflow design) as pre-GenAI software development.
“When you're building agents, not just using them to write code, you start getting into architecting agentic systems.”
Angie Jones argues that developers anxious about agents taking the fun out of coding should move up a layer to architecting agentic systems, where traditional engineering skills like systems thinking and workflow design still apply. She illustrates this with a reusable 'Relocation Scout' house-hunting agent that persists knowledge across sessions. The talk reframes agent-building as a discipline-driven engineering practice rather than one-shot prompting.