--- title: Developing Assembly with autonomous Coding Agents description: An engineer explores whether autonomous coding agents (IBM Bob, Claude Code, Codex, Gemini) can build fully functional software without human-written or... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/developing-assembly-with-autonomous-coding-agents-moiw7tlkg twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Developing Assembly with autonomous Coding Agents | daily.dev og:description: An engineer explores whether autonomous coding agents (IBM Bob, Claude Code, Codex, Gemini) can build fully functional software without human-written or... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/developing-assembly-with-autonomous-coding-agents-moiw7tlkg og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/MoiW7TLkG.png og:image:alt: Developing Assembly with autonomous Coding Agents og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Developing Assembly with autonomous Coding Agents **[Niklas Heidloff](https://daily.dev/sources/heidloff)** · 3 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary An engineer explores whether autonomous coding agents (IBM Bob, Claude Code, Codex, Gemini) can build fully functional software without human-written or inspected code, choosing 6502 Assembly on the Commodore 64 as an extreme test case since he lacked deep expertise in the language. He built two games: Labyrinth, a maze crawler, and Baker Barney, a three-level platformer, with agents autonomously writing game logic, generating tests, running a local VICE emulator to verify code, and iterating through build-test loops. Baker Barney took roughly 3-4 hours of autonomous agent run time from concept to a playable game. The author notes that while spec-driven development and human oversight remain essential for mission-critical production systems, agents are already highly capable for prototyping, proofs of concept, documentation, and test generation. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Can AI coding agents like Claude Code or Codex write working 6502 assembly for the Commodore 64 without a human writing or reviewing the code? Yes, autonomous coding agents were able to build two full C64 games entirely in 6502 assembly without the developer writing or inspecting the underlying code. The agents already possessed deep knowledge of 6502 architecture, memory maps, and VIC-II registers, and used a local VICE emulator plus computer-use capabilities to run, test, and debug the code autonomously. _daily.dev surfaces real-world experiments like this for developers deciding how far to trust coding agents._ ### How long does it take an autonomous coding agent to build a multi-level platformer game from scratch? Building a three-level jump-and-run C64 platformer called Baker Barney took roughly 3 to 4 hours of autonomous agent run time, from initial concept through level design, visual and logic specifications, and a fully playable implementation with debugging against the specs. _Developers gauging realistic timelines for agentic builds can track cases like this on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [A grounded take on agentic coding for production environments](https://daily.dev/posts/a-grounded-take-on-agentic-coding-for-production-environments-eqmzfdloq) · Ivan Velichko · 35 upvotes · 1 comments --- Tags: [#ai-agents](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-agents), [#claude-code](https://daily.dev/tags/claude-code), [#assembly](https://daily.dev/tags/assembly) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/developing-assembly-with-autonomous-coding-agents-moiw7tlkg) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Developing Assembly with autonomous Coding Agents","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/developing-assembly-with-autonomous-coding-agents-moiw7tlkg","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/developing-assembly-with-autonomous-coding-agents-moiw7tlkg"},"datePublished":"2026-08-31T19:13:07.874Z","dateModified":"2026-08-31T19:37:17.456Z","description":"An engineer explores whether autonomous coding agents (IBM Bob, Claude Code, Codex, Gemini) can build fully functional software without human-written or...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/49d3970dd209e00e98175188a0d4f4b6?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/49d3970dd209e00e98175188a0d4f4b6?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Niklas Heidloff","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Niklas Heidloff","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--1T53PJFj--/f_auto/v1743317445/logos/heidloff","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/heidloff"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/developing-assembly-with-autonomous-coding-agents-moiw7tlkg","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"ai-agents,claude-code,assembly","timeRequired":"PT3M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Niklas Heidloff","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/heidloff"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Developing Assembly with autonomous Coding Agents"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/developing-assembly-with-autonomous-coding-agents-moiw7tlkg#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"Can AI coding agents like Claude Code or Codex write working 6502 assembly for the Commodore 64 without a human writing or reviewing the code?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Yes, autonomous coding agents were able to build two full C64 games entirely in 6502 assembly without the developer writing or inspecting the underlying code. 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