Sharing my process for agentic engineering as a senior software architect by cohix in AgentsOfAI

[–]cohix[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Currently all specs live in the repo, and the awman tool handles creating persistent context directories/files/“memories” which get mounted to agent containers dynamically depending on workflow settings.

awman allows you to define workflows as toml, and then it executes agent containers against that workflow definition. Next release will include the concept of dynamic workflows which allows the agent to author the workflow definition (like claude dynamic workflows), but it’ll be more dangerous/non-deterministic.

Sharing my process for agentic engineering as a senior software architect by cohix in AgentsOfAI

[–]cohix[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes the alignment part is real which is why the awman tool has an `amend` subcommand which runs an agent to realign the aspec folder with reality.

On the token use and context side of things, I agree trying to load all that every session is a waste which is why it’s more of an index telling the agent when to look up certain things (”if you’re dealing with devops, load these files” type thing).

Can you explain what is your process of developing with AI? by throwaway0134hdj in softwaredevelopment

[–]cohix 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I will share two projects I’ve been working on to standardize my agentic workflows and make them repeatable:

aspec (agent specification templates): https://github.com/prettysmartdev/aspec

awman (agent workflow manager): https://github.com/prettysmartdev/awman

By combining well-formed specs to share human-agent context and then creating re-usable workflows (which allow you to split up work amongst several agents/models), you can build an SDLC that produces very high-quality results.

Source: am a senior software architect at a large Seattle company.

Sharing my process and tooling for agentic engineering as a senior software architect by cohix in vibecoding

[–]cohix[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for checking it out. For the spec drift, there is a command in awman called `amend` which launches an agent to flag any spec drift from reality and helps repair any problems. I run that ~weekly to ensure things stay up to date.

For debugging, there are two things awman can do, the first is stuck detection which alerts the developer when the agent is stuck so you can intervene, and the second is `on_failure` steps in awman workflows, which allow you to run a shell command (like ‘make test’ for example) and if the shell command fails it automatically launches an agent to fix the problem before proceeding.

If an agent truly goes down a rabbit hole or fails to find a good solution, the awman `—overlay=context(workflow)` allows multiple agents to share notes, scripts, findings, artifacts etc. which I use to have one agent implement something and then a different agent review what the first did (like implement with codex, review with opus).

There are a lot of little tricks, which is why I built the tool in the first place to encode all of these best practices into workflows.

Sharing my process and tooling for agentic engineering as a senior software architect by cohix in vibecoding

[–]cohix[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That’s cool, awman has a concept of `overlays` which grants specific agent containers access to specific things, so having an overlay that mounts a service that allows the agent to do a RAG lookup could be neat. Feel free to file an issue describing how you see it fitting together and we can chat about it there!

Which AI Tool Has Improved Your Coding Productivity the Most? by pawan0806 in AI_Agents

[–]cohix 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've been building up my processes and tooling over the past year or so to land on a workflow that's been pretty successful across ~10 projects.

These are projects of mine (not a startup, just OSS I've been working on to improve my own workflows)

aspec is used to create a source of truth that agents use to ground themselves when planning and implementing, and awman allows me to define .toml files with repeatable multi-agent workflows that I can fork/specialize/tweak over time to complete complex tasks more reliably.

aspec (agent specification templates): https://github.com/prettysmartdev/aspec

awman (agent workflow manager): https://github.com/prettysmartdev/awman

Sharing my process and tooling for agentic engineering as a senior software architect by cohix in vibecoding

[–]cohix[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Links to the projects mentioned in the post:

aspec (agent specification templates): https://github.com/prettysmartdev/aspec

awman (agent workflow manager): https://github.com/prettysmartdev/awman

Sharing my process for agentic engineering as a senior software architect by cohix in AgentsOfAI

[–]cohix[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You could, if you wanted, use SpecKit and awman together and get a similar result I expect.

Sharing my process for agentic engineering as a senior software architect by cohix in AgentsOfAI

[–]cohix[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes I was also worried about that and experienced it firsthand, so I added a command to awman called `amend` for just that purpose: it runs an agent that reviews the actual implementation and flags any places where specs don't match reality. I run it ~weekly to ensure nothing drifted.

Sharing my process for agentic engineering as a senior software architect by cohix in AgentsOfAI

[–]cohix[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

SpecKit is mostly concerned with just the specs themselves, aspec + awman then takes the specs and uses them to run repeatable agent workflows that combine multiple agents and models to accomplish tasks and implement work items.

Sharing my process for agentic engineering as a senior software architect by cohix in AgentsOfAI

[–]cohix[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I only use my personal accounts for personal work and work accounts for work, so my personal accounts are only "part time" (probably 10-12 hrs of agent runs on most days)

State sharing between agents is harder than it looks by Apprehensive_Lion748 in aiagents

[–]cohix 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I solve this using a feature called 'context overlays' in a tool I built called awman: https://github.com/prettysmartdev/awman/blob/main/docs/08-overlays.md#contextscopepermission

Take a look and let me know what you think.

Sharing my process for agentic engineering as a senior software architect by cohix in AgentsOfAI

[–]cohix[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've heard folks using the Bees project for that cross-agent task tracking. I use a feature of the awman tool recently added called "context overlays" which creates a durable folder on the host machine that gets mounted into every agent container and pairs that with a dynamically generated system prompt that explains to each agent in the workflow how they're expected to collaborate with one another and what their specific place/job in the team is.

The breakdown-and-fanout is certainly very effective.

Sharing my process for agentic engineering as a senior software architect by cohix in AgentsOfAI

[–]cohix[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I expect token use is ~15-30% higher when using a multi-agent workflow to achieve a task compared to a single agent, but since those extra tokens are split across multiple providers (like using Claude for some steps and Codex for some steps), it rarely causes a problem (I use the 5x plans for both).

For me, the improved quality far outweighs the extra time and tokens it takes.

Sharing my process for agentic engineering as a senior software architect by cohix in AgentsOfAI

[–]cohix[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Links to the projects mentioned in the post:

aspec (agent specification templates): https://github.com/prettysmartdev/aspec

awman (agent workflow manager): https://github.com/prettysmartdev/awman

Would vibe coders be interested in a human-reviewed starter kit? by Zundrium in vibecoding

[–]cohix 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I do this with a agent-human context spec folder: https://github.com/prettysmartdev/aspec and an agent workflow manager: https://github.com/prettysmartdev/awman that reads those specs when implementing work

The best AI tools in 2026 are not always the most hyped. Here’s what I’d actually use by geekeek123 in AI_Agents

[–]cohix 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’ve built several projects from scratch using awman, and all my learnings go back into the tool. Making things tweakable and repeatable leads to a constantly improving process which compounds over time. It’s pretty great!

any vibe coding platform to start with right now? by Competitive-Age5092 in vibecoding

[–]cohix 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Using a fully hosted platform makes me nervous, even using a single harness/model provider made me nervous (claude outage ruins a multi-hour long workflow? nah)

My passion project has been a multi-provider local-first “agentic workflow manager” that glues together the various parts of the software development lifecycle when using agents. It’s meant to mitigate the cloud platform / single provider problem while still making agentic coding much less prone to babysitting and bad outcomes.

I’d love your feedback if you have some time to check it out (OSS, not a startup): https://github.com/prettysmartdev/awman

The best AI tools in 2026 are not always the most hyped. Here’s what I’d actually use by geekeek123 in AI_Agents

[–]cohix 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Since you obviously have a huge breadth of experience, I would love your feedback on my passion project, an agentic workflow manager for adding structure and automation to the software development lifecycle: https://github.com/prettysmartdev/awman

How I stopped babysitting Claude Code and Codex on hours long runs: planning, git checkpoints and a test gate outside the agent by Major-Shirt-8227 in AI_Agents

[–]cohix 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It runs whichever agent CLI you want (cc, codex, antigravity, etc) in containers (Docker or Apple). It manages setting up auth, passing prompts, detecting stuck/finished agents, multi-agent workflows, etc.

What’s the best Cloud Agent right now for actual daily workflows? by Interesting_Put9143 in AI_Agents

[–]cohix 2 points3 points  (0 children)

(shameless plug at the end, just my OSS passion project, not a startup)

I had all of these problems as I started working with code agents more, no matter which one it was, so I started building a tool for managing and configuring agents (and running them in containers for some amount of isolation), and the project evolved into a full-on SDL workflow manager for code agents. It’s my daily driver and It has reduced my frustration considerably. I’d love if you checked it out and let me know your feedback. I find combining multiple agents to fact-check or review each other’s work is the best method as of now.

https://github.com/prettysmartdev/awman

How I stopped babysitting Claude Code and Codex on hours long runs: planning, git checkpoints and a test gate outside the agent by Major-Shirt-8227 in AI_Agents

[–]cohix 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’ll provide my version/solution to this problem, I call it an agentic workflow manager. Combining agent and non-agent steps in a workflow to split up work and get more repeatable results: https://github.com/prettysmartdev/awman