# Course overview

> Learning outcomes, structure, and expectations

## What this course is about

COMP4020/8020 is a studio-based course on rapidly prototyping web apps with
LLM-based coding agents. Each week pairs a lecture on concepts and techniques
with a studio crit session where you demo your work-in-progress prototype and
get feedback from peers and tutors ---
[the lecture structure](https://comp.anu.edu.au/courses/comp4020-agentic-coding-studio/topics/lecture-structure/) and
[the studio crit model](https://comp.anu.edu.au/courses/comp4020-agentic-coding-studio/topics/studio-crit-model/) cover how each half of the
week runs. The full course description, and the learning outcomes below, are
also on the [front page](https://comp.anu.edu.au/courses/comp4020-agentic-coding-studio/) of this website.

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](https://comp.anu.edu.au/courses/comp4020-agentic-coding-studio/topics/github-pages-deployment/). In
the **full-stack half** after it, your prototypes get a server and a database,
and deploy to [Fly.io](https://fly.io).

## Learning outcomes

By the end of the course you will be able to:

1. design, build and test full-stack web applications using a rapid-prototyping
   process
2. explain how LLM-based coding agents work, including model capabilities, tool
   use and context management
3. design and evaluate different LLM agent workflows for software development
4. apply principles from the scholarly literature to work-in-progress and
   finalised software prototypes

## How the course reads its literature

The fourth outcome draws on two bodies of literature, and the course treats them
differently. The first is settled scholarship: the studio and
reflective-practice tradition --- Schön's reflective practicum, the feedback and
deliberate-practice literature --- that shapes
[the crit](https://comp.anu.edu.au/courses/comp4020-agentic-coding-studio/topics/studio-crit-model/) and
[the assessment model](https://comp.anu.edu.au/courses/comp4020-agentic-coding-studio/topics/assessment/). You apply its principles every
week: the crit protocol and the standing reflection prompts are that literature,
enacted on your own work-in-progress prototypes. The second is the field's own
literature on agentic coding, which moves faster than peer review: the sharpest
current thinking about workflows and harnesses appears in practitioner
writing --- posts, talks, framework documentation --- and can change within a
semester. Read it with scholarly habits anyway: situate the claim, weigh its
evidence, notice what it's selling.

## Labels

Course items carry a short label used across the site: crits are **C1--C10** and
assignments are **A1--A3**. Crits are numbered by their own sequence, not their
teaching week: a crit runs the week after its number, so **C4 is the week 5
crit**. A bare C4 or A2 always means this.

## Expectations

The course requirements are listed in one place:
[your participation](https://comp.anu.edu.au/courses/comp4020-agentic-coding-studio/topics/participation/) --- the week-1 setup, the weekly
rhythm, the assignment deadlines and the standing responsibilities, each line
linking to the page with the detail.

## Workload

This is a 6-unit course with an expected workload of around 130 hours across the
semester --- lectures, studio crits, and independent work outside class. The
weekly crit cadence spreads that work across the semester, so plan for steady
effort each week rather than a late surge.

Source: <https://comp.anu.edu.au/courses/comp4020-agentic-coding-studio/topics/course-overview/>\
Licence: [CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/)\
Cite as: Swift, B. (2026). _COMP4020/COMP8020 Agentic Coding Studio_ [Course materials]. ANU School of Computing. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21395760