Note on Compound Engineering: How Every Codes With Agents via Dan Shipper and Kieran Klaassen

A compound engineer orchestrates agents running in parallel, who plan, write, and evaluate code. This process happens in a loop that looks like this:

1. Plan: Agents read issues, research approaches, and synthesize information into detailed implementation plans.
2. Work: Agents write code and create tests according to those plans.
3. Review: The engineer reviews the output itself and the lessons learned from the output.
4. Compound: The engineer feeds the results back into the system, where they make the next loop better by helping the whole system learn from successes and failures. This is where the magic happens.

FROM:

Dan Shipper and Kieran Klaassen

Compound Engineering: How Every Codes With Agents

Source

Compounding is updating a README (or AGENTS.md) or wiki or some other docs that are then fed forward as prompts/resources on the next problem.