Autonomous Agent Patterns

This is a practical reference for building AI coding agents with the right architecture. It covers the core agent loop (think, decide, act, observe), tool design patterns for file operations and code understanding, and multi-model strategies for balancing speed versus reasoning power. The edit tool pattern using search/replace with occurrence validation is especially useful if you've dealt with agents making broken file modifications. Good for understanding how tools like Cline work under the hood, or if you're building your own autonomous coding assistant and need to handle permissions, browser automation, or human-in-the-loop workflows without reinventing patterns that already work.