Pair Programming with an Agent
You describe. The agent builds. You review every change.
Overview
Now you're going to build something from scratch — a complete web application — by describing what you want to an AI coding agent. You won't write the code yourself. You'll write the house rules, agree a plan, review what the agent builds, and iterate until it's right.
This is pair programming with an AI: you bring the vision, the agent brings the implementation. You'll build a Travel Bucket List web app with full CRUD and localStorage, reviewing every change as a git diff and committing step by step — then push it to a new GitHub repository.
Go off-script. These prompts are suggestions, not assignments. If you want a dark mode toggle, a map view, or a 'random destination' button — ask for it. The agent will figure out how to build it. The point is to practise the back-and-forth: describe, review, refine.
— from the exercise
By the end of this exercise.
- ✓An AGENTS.md with your project's house rules, read by the agent at the start of every session
- ✓A plan you approved before the agent wrote any code
- ✓A Travel Bucket List web app in a single index.html — add, view, edit, mark as visited, and delete
- ✓Data persistence across page refreshes via localStorage
- ✓A Git history of small, reviewed steps — every change read as a diff, then kept or thrown away
- ✓The app pushed to a new repository on GitHub
Terms you'll learn.
- AGENTS.md
- The cross-tool instruction file: house rules the agent reads at the start of each session
- Plan mode
- The agent investigates and proposes a plan, but changes nothing until you approve
- git diff
- Shows exactly what changed since your last commit — review it before you keep a change
- CRUD
- Create, Read, Update, Delete — the four basic data operations
- localStorage
- Browser storage that persists between visits — no server needed
- DOM
- The live representation of the page that JavaScript can change
- Event listener
- Code that runs when something happens (click, submit, keypress)
Sections in this exercise.
- 01What You'll Build
- 02What You'll Need
- 03Create the Project
- 04Write the House Rules
- 05Describe the App
- 06Review What the Agent Built
- 07Open It in Your Browser
- 08Save a Checkpoint
- 09The CRUD Cycle
- 10Iterate and Improve
- 11When Something Goes Wrong
- 12Understand What Was Built
- 13Commit and Push
You built a complete web application without writing a single line of code yourself. You wrote down the house rules, agreed a plan, reviewed every change as a diff, and committed one small step at a time. This is the core loop: describe, review, iterate, understand.