An agent works from what it can see of your codebase, and you remain the one who has to explain the result. These articles cover starting an agent safely on existing code, what to save between sessions, how to cut context without hiding what matters, getting existing code reused, and keeping your own understanding as the agent writes more.
5 articles
Read the evidence precisely, hold yourself to explaining every accepted change without the chat, engage at the level of design, record decisions, and test your own understanding from time to time.
Search for existing code by name and by behavior before planning a new helper, judge near-matches by their contract, point the agent at canonical examples, and review diffs for duplicates.
Measure what fills the context, shorten what loads every turn, scope rules by path and check what the scoping selects, filter output rather than information, and judge the result on completed work.
Keep durable knowledge in the repository and current state in a dated handoff note, record how each claim was verified, and have the next session re-check Git and the tests before continuing.
Start read-only, have the agent explain and trace the code, record a baseline of your own checks, give it one small verifiable task, and review against the baseline before widening the work.
