The 4-Step Agentic Engineering Workflow I Use to Ship Real Apps | Micky Shimeles

Dear subscribers,

Today, I want to share a new episode with Micky.

Micky is a full-stack engineer who has taught 100K+ people how to build with AI. In our episode, he walked me through his 4-step agentic engineering workflow to avoid pumping out slop: Isolate every task, build to a clear structure, prove via validation loops, and ship after agents review your PRs or escalate to you for a manual look.

Watch now on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify.

Micky and I talked about:

• (00:00) Why most software factories pump out slop
• (02:06) Step 1 (Isolate): How to run multiple agents at once
• (07:18) Step 2 (Build): Give agents a structure to build on
• (10:44) Step 3 (Prove): Build agentic validation loops
• (16:48) The one step Micky never hands to agents
• (21:30) Step 4 (Ship): Getting agents to review PRs reliably
• (28:20) Why Micky doesn’t write specs
• (33:08) Comparing Astra and Fable for coding
• (43:08) Are AI skills obsolete with today’s models?

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Top takeaways I learned from this episode

Micky’s 4-step agentic engineering workflow

1. Use Micky’s 4-step workflow that makes agents prove their work before you merge. Micky’s “software factory” is his AGENTS.md file plus a handful of skills:
   • Isolate. The new-feature skill gives each agent its own copy of the code on a separate worktree, so that you can run multiple agents in parallel.
   • Build. The code-structure skill writes code based on service-layer architecture with explicit inputs and structured returns.
   • Prove. The evidence-driven-testing skill has the agent screen-record itself testing the app to compare the before and after states for a change.
   • Ship. The greploop skill uses Greptile, an AI reviewer, to test and improve the PR until it scores 5/5 with zero unresolved comments. Micky then usually reviews the PR himself before shipping.
   • Everything Micky ships to real users moves through these four steps.

How Micky makes agents earn his trust