Willison: Agentic Engineering Fireside — Sandboxing as the Critical Safety Layer

simonwillison.net·low signal

At the Pragmatic Summit (March 14, San Francisco), Willison gave a fireside on agentic engineering patterns covering safety challenges of running coding agents, emphasizing sandboxed execution as non-negotiable. Key patterns published in his guide include linear walkthroughs, hoarding reusable prompts, and designing deterministic evaluation loops. The talk codifies the emerging professional discipline around coding agents — practical counterweight to the vibe coding hype cycle.