Agentic Engineering Best Practices: 5 Techniques Top Engineers Use Daily

Most developers using Claude Code are leaving 90% of its potential on the table.

They jump straight into prompting, fight context drift, and wonder why their AI assistant seems to forget everything mid-conversation. Sound familiar?

Here's the fix: five agentic engineering techniques that transform how you work with AI. No new tools required. Just a better system that the top agentic engineers use daily.

1. PRD-First Development

Before writing a single line of code, create a Product Requirements Document. Not a 50-page corporate spec. A simple markdown file that answers: what are we building, what's in scope, and what's explicitly out of scope.

This becomes your north star. Every conversation with Claude Code references it. Instead of context drifting across sessions, you ask: "Based on the PRD, what should we build next?"

The PRD splits your project into granular features. Authentication. API endpoints. User interface. One feature per session. Claude Code handles focused work beautifully. It falls apart when you ask it to do everything at once.

Want to go deeper? Check out our guide on planning modes for structuring complex projects.

2. Modular Rules Architecture

Your CLAUDE.md file is probably too long. Most developers dump everything into one massive rules file. That's a mistake.

Keep your global rules lightweight. Tech stack, testing strategy, logging conventions. Things that apply no matter what you're working on.

Then split task-specific context into separate reference documents. Frontend conventions in one file. API patterns in another. Deployment rules somewhere else. Your CLAUDE.md references these paths, and Claude Code loads them only when relevant.

The goal: protect your context window. Load what you need, when you need it. Our CLAUDE.md mastery guide breaks this down in detail.

3. Command-ify Everything

If you prompt something twice, turn it into a command.

Creating commits? That's a /commit command. Code reviews? /review. Priming context at session start? /prime.

These aren't complicated. They're markdown files that define workflows. You'll save thousands of keystrokes over time, and more importantly, you'll build a system that compounds.

Check out how to create your own reusable workflows in our skills guide.

4. The Context Reset

Here's what most people miss: planning and execution should happen in separate conversations.

During planning, you research, discuss, and output a structured plan document. Then you clear the conversation completely. Fresh context. When you execute, you feed only that plan document. Nothing else.

Why? Context window degradation is real. After enough back-and-forth, Claude Code starts making assumptions based on earlier messages that are no longer relevant. A fresh start means sharper focus, better results.

Learn more about managing this in our context management guide.

5. System Evolution Mindset

Every bug is an opportunity to make your system smarter.

When Claude Code uses the wrong import style, don't just fix it. Add a rule: "Always use @ path aliases for imports." When it forgets to run tests, update your plan template to include a testing section.

The difference between good and great isn't fixing bugs. It's fixing the system that allowed the bug.

This mindset turns every session into a compounding improvement. Over time, your AI coding assistant gets more reliable, more consistent, and more valuable. Our experimentation mindset guide explores this further.

The Agentic Engineering Difference

None of these agentic engineering techniques require new tools. They're just better ways of working with AI.

PRD-first. Modular rules. Commands for everything. Context resets. System evolution.

The developers who master agentic engineering aren't just using Claude Code. They're building a system that gets smarter every day. That's the core of what agentic engineering is all about: systematic improvement, not one-off prompting.

If you want to skip the manual setup and start with all five practices baked in, ClaudeFast's Code Kit ships with 18 specialized agents, modular skills architecture, slash commands for common workflows, context recovery hooks, and a system evolution pattern built into the CLAUDE.md itself.