--- title: "How Does a Coding Agent Work? By Tore Nestenius" url: https://daily.dev/posts/how-does-a-coding-agent-work-by-tore-nestenius-fkqz5bsqr source_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQQGCHnvCF0 type: video:youtube source: "Jfokus" published: 2026-05-22T08:05:09.217Z updated: 2026-05-22T08:05:49.559Z tags: ["ai-agents", "c#", "mcp", "claude-code"] reading_time: 44 upvotes: 0 comments: 0 language: 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. # How Does a Coding Agent Work? By Tore Nestenius **[Jfokus](https://daily.dev/sources/jfokus)** · 44 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A conference talk transcript demystifying how coding agents like Claude Code work under the hood. Covers the core agent loop (while loop + tool descriptions + conversation history), how models access local files via tool calls, MCP endpoints as agent-friendly APIs, Claude Code's skills system, and hooks for extending agent behavior. The speaker also built a custom open-source 'Coding Agent Explorer' tool to intercept and visualize HTTP traffic between the agent and the model, and demonstrates building a minimal coding agent in under 200 lines of C#. Key insight: every request includes a system prompt (~25K chars), tool descriptions (~90K chars), and full conversation history — making context management critical for cost and reliability. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Components of A Coding Agent](https://daily.dev/posts/components-of-a-coding-agent-owpdoz5b4) · Sebastian Raschka · 2 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#ai-agents](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-agents), [#c#](https://daily.dev/tags/c#), [#mcp](https://daily.dev/tags/mcp), [#claude-code](https://daily.dev/tags/claude-code) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/how-does-a-coding-agent-work-by-tore-nestenius-fkqz5bsqr)