Your AI coding agent is a while loop with delusions of grandeur

The first time I used Claude Code to refactor an entire module, I had an almost mystical experience. I described what I wanted, went to grab a coffee, and when I came back there was a pull request with 14 changed files, updated tests, and a decent commit message. "This is magic," I thought. It's not magic. It's a while loop. Michael Bolin from OpenAI recently published an article breaking down the internal workings of Codex CLI. And it turns out the secret behind AI coding agents isn't some revo