feat: add article on Test Driven Agentic Workflows

Author: limulus

www/links/2026/02/03/where-are-the-test-driven-agentic-workflows-anyway/index.md

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+---
+tags:
+  - article
+  - link
+author: eric
+title: Where Are the Test Driven Agentic Workflows, Anyway?
+date: 2026-02-03 16:56:10 -07:00
+linkUrl: https://blog.fsck.com/2026/02/03/managing-agents/
+---
+
+[Jesse Vincent][link]:
+
+> By my very uncharitable math, agentic software engineering methodologies have gotten to
+> somewhere around the 1970s. Like everything in AI, this is, of course, a speed run. We’re
+> very quickly relearning why software engineering management and software engineering
+> project management matter.
+>
+> So by next Tuesday, maybe folks will start thinking about what they can steal from XP.
+
+I’ve been thinking that we’re probably not that far away from seeing a decent boost in
+quality from coding agents that implement a Test Driven Development workflow.
+
+Based on my experience, it’s not really possible to get a coding agent to follow TDD on its
+own by instructing it to. Even with the rules of TDD spelled out in an `AGENTS.md` or
+similar, I’ve found that they will write tests simultaneously with the production code. They
+don’t bother ensuring they see a test fail for the expected reason. I don’t know if that is
+because the models themselves have trouble following the instructions, or if the agent’s
+system prompts are interfering.
+
+I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if next Tuesday Claude Code _does_ ship a TDD mode.