A course about humans making things for other humans — using AI and other tools.
LLM-based coding agents — tools that run in a loop, editing files, executing code and searching the web to achieve a goal — offer a powerful new workflow for developing software. This is especially true for application domains well-represented in LLM training sets, like the web.
Moving beyond naive “vibecoding”, this course provides a studio-based approach to rapidly prototyping web apps. In the weekly lectures you’ll learn fundamental concepts and practical skills for harnessing an agentic coding workflow. In the weekly studio crit sessions, you’ll demo your work-in-progress prototypes and receive feedback from peers and tutors. By the end of the course you’ll have designed, developed and deployed multiple web app prototypes using a rapid, feedback-driven process.
Learning outcomes#
At the completion of this course, you will be able to:
- design, build and test full-stack web applications using a rapid-prototyping process
- explain how LLM-based coding agents work, including model capabilities, tool use and context management
- design and evaluate different LLM agent workflows for software development
- apply principles from the scholarly literature to work-in-progress and finalised software prototypes
How the course runs#
The course runs in Semester 2, 2026 and is available as COMP4020 (undergraduate) and COMP8020 (postgraduate).
Each week has two components: a lecture covering concepts, tools and techniques, and a studio crit session where you bring your latest prototype and get feedback. Crit groups are kept small (around 20 students each) and led by an experienced tutor, so your work gets real attention every week.
The semester comes in two halves, and this site calls them that throughout. In the static half, up to the week 7 lecture, everything you build is client-side and deploys to GitHub Pages. In the full-stack half after it, your prototypes get a server and a database, and deploy to Fly.io.
The whole course on one timeline: ten weekly crits, three assignments, and the weekly lectures. Hover over (or tab to) any marker for the details, and follow it through to the full brief.
- Census date
Census date
Last day to drop the course without academic or financial penalty. Assignment 1 marks come back before it, by design.
- Last day to drop without failure
Last day to drop without failure
Past census you still owe the fees, but dropping on or before this date leaves a withdrawal on your record rather than a fail.
- Assignment 1
Assignment 1
The first individual prototype: an interactive explainer built with an agentic workflow, marked on the legibility of your process and your response to the brief.
- Assignment 2
Assignment 2
The second individual prototype: a whole course website for a course of your own design, marked on the legibility of your process and your response to the brief.
- Final Project (Assignment 3)
Final Project (Assignment 3)
The capstone: a full-stack web application with a persistent backend, built and deployed with an agentic workflow.
- C1: Forgotten web (week 2)
C1 · Forgotten web
The opening build: a simple text-first site you can ship on day one.
- C2: Unsolicited redesign (week 3)
C2 · Unsolicited redesign
The content is given this week, and serving it well is the brief.
- C3: Assignment 1 retro (week 4)
C3 · Assignment 1 retro
A brief demo of your Assignment 1 prototype, then articulate the breakthrough.
- C4: An instrument (week 5)
C4 · An instrument
Judgement week: an agent can build a synth but can't hear the result, so your ear is the harness.
- C5: A game (week 6)
C5 · A game
A small game gives tests and human judgement different jobs.
- C6: Assignment 2 retro (week 7)
C6 · Assignment 2 retro
A brief demo of your Assignment 2 prototype, then articulate the breakthrough.
- C7: Build the ANU system you wish existed (week 8)
C7 · Build the ANU system you wish existed
The first full-stack crit, and the week the database gets real.
- C8: It's alive! (week 9)
C8 · It's alive!
The final project starts here, and the bar is proof of life.
- C9: Crit the critics (week 10)
C9 · Crit the critics
No new prototype this week — the write-up is the artefact, and it feeds straight into the portfolio.
- C10: Fly by instruments (week 11)
C10 · Fly by instruments
Observability turned on your own project.
- Setup drop-in
Setup drop-in
Can't finish onboarding? Bring your laptop and we'll help you get sorted.
- Redeemable crit
Redeemable crit
One extra sitting that replaces an earlier crit mark of 1 or below. Open to everyone, no form and no reason to give — but only worth coming to if you're carrying a lost week.
- Week 1: Introduction
Week 1: Introduction
Welcome to the Agentic Coding Studio
- Week 2: Specs and self-portrait
Week 2: Specs and self-portrait
The brief poses the problem, the spec is the contract, and your response is a self-portrait of the developer you want to be
- Week 3: Backpressure
Week 3: Backpressure
Harness engineering is the art of giving good negative feedback — the model generates; the harness rejects what's wrong, fast and automatically
- Week 4: Context engineering
Week 4: Context engineering
The agent's working memory as a designed resource — and, on the web side, the ceiling of static: neal.fun / pudding.cool-style interactive pages
- Week 5: Verification
Week 5: Verification
The agent says it's done — but has anyone run it, and do you still understand it? Verification, and the cognitive debt that green checks can't see
- Week 6: Evidence of practice
Week 6: Evidence of practice
Read the transcript and the git log closely, reconstruct one consequential decision, and write what you learned into the harness, where the next session will read it
assignments weekly crits one-off sessions lectures enrolment dates today
Prerequisites and enrolment#
Because it’s a new course, all enrolments go through ANU’s permission code application — even if you satisfy the prerequisites.
- if you’ve completed the prerequisite (COMP3900 for COMP4020, COMP6390 for COMP8020), just say so in your application and you’ll get straight in
- if you haven’t done the prerequisite but have completed another 3000- or 4000-level COMP course (6000- or 8000-level for COMP8020), explain in your application why you think you satisfy it and you’ll be assessed case-by-case — just note that the course assumes some knowledge from the prereqs, so you may need to pick up a few things as we go
If you’ve applied and haven’t heard back after a week, email student services to follow up.
