Claude AI Agents: Build Autonomous AI Workflows (2026)

Claude AI Agents: The Future of Autonomous Coding

Claude agents are autonomous AI systems that can plan, execute, and iterate on complex tasks. Claude Code itself is an agent — and you can build your own.

What is an AI Agent?

An AI agent is an AI system that can:

1. Understand a goal
2. Plan steps to achieve it
3. Execute actions (read files, run commands, call APIs)
4. Iterate based on results
5. Complete the task autonomously

Claude Code is Anthropic’s flagship agent for coding.

Claude Code as an Agent

When you run claude in a project:

cd my-project
claude
> Add user authentication with JWT

Claude Code autonomously:

1. Analyzes your codebase
2. Plans the implementation
3. Creates/modifies files
4. Runs tests
5. Fixes issues
6. Reports results

This is agentic AI in action.

Subagents

Claude Code supports subagents — isolated child agents that handle specific subtasks:

• Each subagent works independently
• Results are summarized back to the parent
• Useful for parallelizing complex tasks

Example workflow:

1. Main agent receives “refactor the entire backend”
2. Spawns subagent for database layer
3. Spawns subagent for API routes
4. Spawns subagent for tests
5. Combines results

Agent SDK

Anthropic provides an Agent SDK for building custom agents:

from anthropic import Anthropic

client = Anthropic()

# Create an agent loop
tools = [...]  # Define your tools
messages = []

while not task_complete:
    response = client.messages.create(
        model="claude-sonnet-4-20250514",
        tools=tools,
        messages=messages,
    )
    # Process tool calls
    # Update messages
    # Check completion

The SDK handles the agent loop, tool execution, and conversation management.

Multi-Agent Teams

For complex projects, use agent teams — multiple agents coordinated to work on different aspects:

Agent	Role
Planner	Breaks down requirements
Coder	Implements features
Reviewer	Reviews code quality
Tester	Writes and runs tests
Deployer	Handles CI/CD

Extending Agents with MCP

Use MCP servers to give agents access to external tools:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "database": { "command": "npx", "args": ["@mcp/server-postgres", "..."] },
    "github": { "command": "npx", "args": ["@mcp/server-github"] }
  }
}

Now your agent can query databases and manage GitHub issues.

Building Your First Agent

1. Install Claude Code
2. Create a CLAUDE.md with project context
3. Configure MCP servers for external access
4. Define skills for reusable workflows
5. Start with simple tasks, scale up

Related Articles

• Claude Code MCP Guide — Extend with MCP
• Claude API Guide — Build custom apps
• Claude Code Tips — Power user techniques
• Claude AI Automation — Automate workflows