# Agent Workflows

> Practical coding-agent workflows: loops, context control, MCP, skills, and the failure modes that show up after the demo.

Field notes on coding agents: loops, context, MCP, skills, and the parts that break in real projects.

- [Inside DeepSeek Harness and Its Plugin-Based Agent Runtime](https://hqman.me/blog/deepseek-harness-agent-runtime.md): DeepSeek Harness separates models, tools, sessions, permissions, and interfaces into plugins that builders can replace and combine.
- [LoopX: A Local Control Plane for Long-Running Agent Work](https://hqman.me/blog/loopx-control-plane.md): LoopX keeps goals, evidence, ownership, quotas, and handoffs stable across long-running agent sessions without replacing the agent runtime.
- [Can Kimi K3 Handle a Real Production Backend?](https://hqman.me/blog/kimi-k3-production-backend-audit.md): A hands-on Kimi K3 backend audit across 68K lines of FastAPI code, including query fixes, measured results, and the full task cost.
- [Loop Engineer Was Barely a Thing. Graph Engineer Already Showed Up.](https://hqman.me/blog/loop-to-graph-engineer.md): Prompt, context, harness, loop, graph: five stacked layers that move reliability out of the model and into the system around it.
- [AI Is Turning Everyone Into a DevOps Engineer](https://hqman.me/blog/agent-server-setup.md): A DigitalOcean migration that used to take half a day. I set up SSH, described the target state, and Codex did the rest.
- [GPT-5.6 Sol Wiped a Developer's Mac. Protect Yours.](https://hqman.me/blog/gpt56-sol-file-deletion.md): On July 10, GPT-5.6 Sol deleted a tester's home directory after a failed $HOME expansion. How the incident happened, and three layers of defense.
- [Your Agent Doesn't Need a Bigger Window. It Needs Context Governance.](https://hqman.me/blog/headroom-context-governance.md): Headroom sits between your agent and the model, classifying and compressing tool output before it fills the context window.
- [Agents can now deploy to Cloudflare without signing up](https://hqman.me/blog/cloudflare-temporary-accounts.md): Wrangler --temporary gives an agent a 60-minute Cloudflare account, a live workers.dev URL, and a claim link. No OAuth, no MFA, no human click.
- [Doubao's Full Agent Skill Architecture Leaked: 25 Skills, 283 Files](https://hqman.me/blog/doubao-agent-skills.md): A leaked Doubao skill pack shows 25 modular skills and 283 files organized around real work objects, not one giant agent.
- [40 agent loops you can copy into Claude Code or Cursor](https://hqman.me/blog/agent-loop-templates.md): loops.elorm.xyz packages 40 agent loop templates by category so you can copy a kickoff prompt into Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, or Gemini CLI.
- [Loop Engineering: A 14-Step Roadmap from Prompter to Loop Designer](https://hqman.me/blog/loop-engineering-14-step-roadmap.md): A practical roadmap for deciding whether to build an agent loop, then adding automation, state, verification, tools, and security controls in the right order.
- [Loop Engineering: The Next Layer After Prompt Engineering](https://hqman.me/blog/loop-engineering-next-layer.md): Peter Steinberger and Boris Cherny both say the job is designing loops, not writing prompts. Feedback, stop conditions, and token cost decide if it works.
- [How to Build a Self-Improving Company with AI](https://hqman.me/blog/self-improving-company-ai.md): YC partner Tom Blomfield's framing: make company knowledge machine-readable, then run loops that sense, decide, act, and improve overnight.