How Claude Code Works - Jared Zoneraich

Coding agents are everywhere—but what actually made them finally usable for real engineering work? This talk walks through Jared Zoneraich’s independent breakdown of Claude Code’s architecture and why he believes “simple” beats brittle, over-engineered agent frameworks.

Key takeaways

• Breaks down the “Master Loop” approach: a single-threaded while-loop that repeatedly calls tools and feeds results back to the model.
• Covers the core toolset (e.g., Bash, Grep/Glob, diff-based editing) and why Bash is central for robustness and training-data reasons.
• Explains prompt-driven planning via to-do lists—structured guidance without deterministic enforcement.
• Discusses reliability concerns: sandboxing/permissions, context management, and the use of sub-agents to avoid bloating the main context.