TL;DR

2026 = "Year of Trust" cho agentic engineering. Matt Van Horn share 22 hack để làm việc như top 2% engineers:

  • Core Four: Context + Model + Prompt + Tools (15% vs 85% text waste)

  • Custom agents = 50 lines code + 3 tools + 150-line prompt → toàn bộ daily problem

  • Multi-agent orchestration = 3-100 agents song song → 4x tăc tốc (12m → 3m)

  • Agent sandboxes + best-of-N = defer trust, make failure cheap

  • Out-loop coding = autonomous teams xử lý background tasks (Slack, GitHub)

  • Tools eating SaaS = agent-native CLIs 50ms vs slow UI clicking

  • Agentic Coding 2.0 = lead agent conducts specialized worker team

Vấn đề: Model Không Phải Giới Hạn

Andrej Karpathy: "Thập niên tiếp theo là decade of agents." Nhưng 2026 riêng thế nào?

"Year of Trust." Mỗi quyết định của top engineers quay về 1 câu hỏi: Do you trust your agents?

Model không còn là bottleneck. Trust là bottleneck. Việc xây dựng hệ thống tự động hoá đáng tin cậy.

22 Hack Agentic Engineering

GROUP 1: The Core Four Leverage Points

Hack #1-5: Core Four Architecture (Context, Model, Prompt, Tools)

  • Context = codebase knowledge (research patterns, conventions)

  • Model = reasoning engine (Claude 4 Opus)

  • Prompt = communicate intent + constraints

  • Tools = actions (bash, scripts, APIs) — 15% of output tokens, 85% waste

The opportunity: 85% of LLM output is text when it should be actions. Tool calling là tương lai.

GROUP 2: Custom Agents Above All

Hack #6-8: Specialized Agents for Massive Problems

  • 50 lines code + 3 tools + 150-line system prompt = automate 1 massive daily problem

  • "Right now, there is a custom agent running somewhere, doing someone's job better than they can."

  • First attempts = 95% garbage rate, second = 50%. Iterative + multi-agent validation là key.

GROUP 3: Multi-Agent Orchestration

Hack #9-11: Parallelize, Verify, Coordinate

  • Single agent ≠ enough. Run 3, 5, 10, 100 agents song song.

  • 4x speedup: last30days reduced 12+ minutes → 3 minutes (entity-aware parallel pipelines)

  • Cross-validation = more agents → more verification → more trust

  • Agent-native CLIs + SQLite mirrors: 50ms compound queries (vs remote HTTP calls)

GROUP 4: Agent Sandboxes & Best-of-N

Hack #12-14: Defer Trust, Make Failure Cheap

  • Spin up 10 agents in sandboxes (dev box, staging env). Everyone gets a shot.

  • Only merge the winner. Best-of-N pattern = defer trust until you need it.

  • High-trust agentic engineering = space where even if everything goes wrong, it doesn't matter.

GROUP 5: In-Loop vs Out-Loop Coding

Hack #15-17: Progressive Offloading

  • In-loop = terminal, babysitting agent step-by-step, your precious engineering time

  • Out-loop = Slack, Discord, GitHub — autonomous teams handle background tasks, submit PRs

  • Goal: Maximize out-loop, minimize in-loop. Build trust gradually, offload progressively.

  • Stage 5: Parallel cloud execution (multiple devices) = direct agents from beach, phone, anywhere.

GROUP 6: System is Primary Artifact, Not Code

Hack #18-19: Extract Taste, Build Private Benchmarks

  • Code is less valuable than the system producing code (CLAUDE.md, patterns, reviewers, compound learning)

  • Extract senior engineer taste/judgment into CLAUDE.md → scales expertise without manual review

  • Public benchmarks saturated (90-100% scores). Build private eval suites measuring real workflows.

GROUP 7: SOPs, Tools, Printing Press CLIs

Hack #20-22: Agents Eat SaaS, Agent-Native CLIs, Compound Learning

  • Tools eating SaaS: Agent-native CLIs 50ms vs 5-minute manual clicking through slow UIs

  • Printing Press: Generate agent-native CLI (Go binary + Claude skill + MCP server) from 1 prompt

  • Compound engineering: Every cycle (plan → build → review → compound) teaches system. Future work cheaper.

  • last30days: Real community signal (Reddit, X, YouTube) beats stale training data

Timeline: 2024 → 2025 → 2026

  • 2024: AI coding emerges. "Big Three" = Context + Model + Prompt

  • 2025: Claude Code brings agentic coding. "Core Four" = + Tools

  • 2026 (Now): Agentic Coding 2.0. Lead agent conducts orchestra of specialized workers. You = executive, not engineer.

5-Step Roadmap: Từ Base → Orchestrator

Step 1: Build custom agent. 50 lines, 3 tools, extraordinary at 1 problem.
Step 2: Add planner + builder + reviewer.
Step 3: Sandboxes. Defer trust. Best-of-N.
Step 4: Out-loop system (Slack/GitHub autonomous). Progressive offload.
Step 5: Lead agent orchestrator. Agentic Coding 2.0.

Key Insight: The Bonus Bet

"The First End-to-End Agentic Engineers." We will see the first engineer publish: "Prompt to production. No review. No human in loop."

Full autonomy. Lead agent plans, spawns workers, reviews, ships entire feature. Not vaporware. Happening now.

Kết Luận: Agents > AGI Hype

AGI/ASI marketing = greatest vaporware ever. Top 2% engineers?

"There is no AGI, there is no ASI. There are just agents."

Assemble your team. Craft the best custom agents. Promote a lead agent. Ship relentlessly.

via Top 2% Agentic Engineering Roadmap + Compound Engineering