How to Build a Coding Agent - It's 50 Lines of Code

Agents sound mysterious, complicated, and out of reach.
They’re not.

In this livestream, I’ll show you how to build a coding agent in PowerShell with PSAI — and the whole thing is only about 50 lines of code, including the instruction prompt.

You’ll see the agent run commands, search codebases, edit files with diffs, and even recover when things go sideways. All live. All simple.
No magic. Just loops and tools.

Agenda

• Kick off — the myth vs the reality of “agents”
• The tiny core — the 50 lines that power it all
• Showtime — prompts, commands, file reads, edits, searches
• Let it break — watch it stumble, then recover
• What’s next — ideas for extending with more tools and workflows
• Open floor — questions, riffs, “what if” scenarios

Who Should Join

• Developers curious about what agents really are
• PowerShell fans who want to explore AI workflows
• Anyone who thought building an agent was out of reach

Takeaways

• A working mental model of coding agents
• Code you can copy, run, and extend
• Confidence that “agents” are not rocket science

About Doug
Doug Finke is a 16-time Microsoft MVP and creator of the PowerShell AI module — chat in your console, NLP in your scripts — plus other popular tools like PowerShell + Excel integration.

With 40+ years in tech (from punch cards to AI), Doug is now focused on the next evolution: building autonomous tools and showing others how to think and build with AI — not just code around it.