# How Andrej Karpathy actually uses coding agents

nanochat, coined “vibe coding”

**If you take one thing:** `autoresearch`, overnight agent research. he edits only program.md and agents run the experiments; round one found ~20 real gains.

- **Agent:** Claude Code (cli) ([source, 2026-01-26](https://x.com/karpathy/status/2015883857489522876))
- **Agent:** Codex ([source, 2026-04-30](https://karpathy.bearblog.dev/sequoia-ascent-2026/))
- **Model:** Claude Fable 5 ([source, 2026-07-03](https://github.com/karpathy/nanochat/commit/3616a02925b44a9dc0a104102ee5acdf3a145516))
- **Review:** Watches agents like a hawk in an IDE ([source, 2026-01-26](https://x.com/karpathy/status/2015883857489522876))
- **Harness:** Claude Code sessions in Ghostty, IDE on the right ([source, 2026-01-26](https://x.com/karpathy/status/2015883857489522876))
- **Rules file:** program.md (autoresearch), CLAUDE.md (llm-council) ([source, 2026-03-09](https://github.com/karpathy/autoresearch/blob/068d93da75aa45f72ba482046f108241aaaf1b8e/program.md#L37))
- **Skills:** read-arxiv-paper ([source, 2026-03-15](https://github.com/karpathy/nanochat/tree/1f9e42a85588c34be86e4cb30db5488b0f01f4c2/.claude/skills))

## In their words

> TLDR everyone has their developing flow, my current is a small few CC sessions on the left in ghostty windows/tabs and an IDE on the right for viewing the code + manual edits.

> Like many of you, I've been using agentic tools like Claude Code, Codex, and adjacent things for a while, maybe over the last year.

> Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

> The models definitely still make mistakes and if you have any code you actually care about I would watch them like a hawk, in a nice large IDE on the side.

> TLDR everyone has their developing flow, my current is a small few CC sessions on the left in ghostty windows/tabs and an IDE on the right for viewing the code + manual edits.


Archetype (our label): Purist. Newest source: 2026-07-03.
Card: https://www.prehistoriq.com/stacks/karpathy/ · Data: https://github.com/prehistoriq/stacks/blob/main/data/stacks/karpathy.json