Agentic Coding Design Patterns

Agentic Coding Design Patterns is an open-source book by Kirill Mokevnin — developer and co-founder of the Hexlet programming school — that catalogs recurring patterns for human-AI collaboration in software development. Available online in English, Russian, and Spanish, it is built from Markdown using Honkit (a GitBook fork) and designed with print output (PDF/EPUB) in mind.

What It Is

The project applies the spirit of the classic "Gang of Four" (GoF) design patterns book to a new domain: how a developer interacts with an AI coding agent throughout the software development lifecycle. Rather than cataloging object-oriented programming patterns, it documents repeatable strategies for task setting, context management, verification, and project organization when working alongside an AI agent. Anti-patterns are collected in a dedicated chapter alongside the positive patterns.

Structure and Content

The book is organized as a flat collection of Markdown files grouped by area of agent interaction:

• Task setting — patterns for how to frame and communicate work to an agent
• Working with context — strategies for managing what the agent knows and sees
• Verification — approaches for checking and validating agent output
• Project organization — patterns for structuring projects in an agentic workflow
• Anti-patterns — a dedicated chapter on common failure modes

Each pattern follows a consistent template (pattern.md / anti-pattern.md skeletons are provided per locale), and assets such as diagrams and code samples are shared across all language versions via a common book/assets/ directory.

Multilingual and Open Authorship

The canonical locale is Russian; patterns are first written in Russian and then translated into English and Spanish. The repository layout makes contributing translations straightforward, with a CONTRIBUTING.md guide covering how to add a pattern and how translations work. The text and diagrams are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, while code samples are released into the public domain under CC0, making the material freely reusable and adaptable.

Technical Setup

The book is built with Honkit, a community-maintained fork of GitBook, and can be previewed locally or built into a static site or PDF/EPUB using standard pnpm commands. The repository uses a multilingual Honkit configuration, with each locale's table of contents defined in its own SUMMARY.md. PDF generation for each locale requires Calibre's ebook-convert tool.

Current Status

The repository was created in mid-2025 and has been actively updated, with the last push recorded in late September 2025. It has accumulated over 200 GitHub stars and 7 forks, with 17 open issues indicating ongoing community engagement. The project is in active development, with the author — who has a background spanning web development, engineering culture, and developer education through Hexlet — continuing to expand the pattern catalog.