March 2026
Intermediate
376 pages
8h 5m
English
Overview
Move beyond prompt-based coding by using Claude Code to design reliable, agent-driven workflows and build production-ready full-stack applications
Key Features
- Learn Claude Code as a development partner to build custom automations and agentic workflows
- Build and iterate on a Next.js application using Claude Code for AI-assisted development
- Scale AI-assisted development with Claude Code while maintaining code quality
Book Description
Most developers encounter Claude Code through chat-style prompting, but that approach breaks down as projects grow and automation must be safe, repeatable, and controlled. Agentic Coding with Claude Code shows how to move beyond ad hoc prompts and use Claude Code as an extensible, agent-driven development platform.
This book focuses on building context-aware AI workflows directly in your terminal and IDE. You will learn how to control Claude Code using slash commands, manage long-term context with persistent memory files, and automate development tasks using hooks that trigger actions across Claude Code's lifecycle.
The book also covers the Model Context Protocol (MCP) as an important part of the modern agentic ecosystem. You will understand why MCP exists, explore its core architecture, and configure MCP servers inside Claude Code to improve context sharing across tools, agents, and workflows. The trade-offs between MCP, skills, and subagents are discussed to help you choose the right approach.
You will design and orchestrate multi-agent systems using subagents, parallel sessions, and hierarchical delegation. By the end of the book, you will be able to integrate Claude Code into real-world development workflows with confidence and control.
What you will learn
- Design agentic coding workflows in the terminal and IDE using Claude Code
- Build custom automations with reusable slash commands and hooks
- Use Claude Code with a Next.js project to implement AI-driven workflows
- Create persistent AI memory using Claude Code memory files
- Apply MCP for structured context sharing across tools and agents
- Design multi-agent systems using subagents and orchestration patterns
- Enforce coding standards using project documentation and context control
- Scale AI pair programming while keeping code maintainable
Who this book is for
This book is for developers and engineers who want to move beyond chat-based AI and build agentic, automated development workflows using Claude Code and MCP. It is ideal for application developers with prior software engineering experience who want to integrate context-aware AI agents into their terminal and IDE, automate complex tasks, and design scalable multi-agent systems. It will also benefit AI engineers and GenAI users working closely with modern development workflows.
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access
More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.