Hacker News

Ask HN: How to Learn to Build Agentic AI Systems (Like Claude Code)

AI Intelligence Curator & Systems Engineer · Published 2025-08-27

Hello folks, I’m trying to learn how one can build agentic AI systems similar to Claude Code, and eventually adapt that knowledge toward domain-specific use cases (e.g., “Claude Code for healthcare, finance, education, etc.”). For those of you who’ve studied or built these kinds of systems, I’d love to hear your recommendations on: • Foundational learning: What books, courses, or papers provide the best grounding for understanding LLM-based systems and their decision-making? • Architectural patterns: What design patterns are worth studying for things like context management, memory, reasoning, and orchestration? • Build vs. deploy: How do you think about building internal systems vs. packaging/distributing them as APIs, SDKs, or products? • Open source projects: Which ones are most valuable to study for internals (decision making, evals, context engineering, tool use, etc.)? • Evals and observability: What tools or products help evaluate quality, measure system behavior, and observe performance in real-world use? • Models: Which models are best suited for “thinking” (reasoning, planning, decomposing problems) vs. “doing” (execution, coding, retrieval)? • Learning path: How would you approach going from theory → prototype → production-quality system? My goal is to discover high-quality resources that one can truly spend time learning from and building with—through iteration and practice—while also sharing what I learn so others on the same path can benefit. Thanks in advance for sharing your experiences and guidance!