Introduction

The purpose of this post is to explain how to be less afraid of Agentic Coding or AI-assisted programming. Currently, there's an online trend about AI taking our jobs. Some jobs will definitely transform, and people will not need that much. But when talking about developers loosing their jobs, which is, for some reason, the target of VC-backed companies is sadly. And many developers are afraid of agentic coding. I will not blame them; it's hard to feel like you are not in control anymore. Fortunately, not everything is bad in agentic coding; you can benefit a lot if you Know Your Tools

Example of an AI Coding Agent using Bash commands:

The Know How

Let's start at the beginning: What is an AI Agent?

There are multiple definitions about what an AI Agent is, some are very detailed and highly technical, and others are simpler, like: An Agent is a LLM with tools.

Yup, short, simple, sweet!

Tools

Talking about tools, you can define the tools your selected LLM will use, such as fetching weather data, calling an endpoint, doing a web search, and running bash commands.

With tools like web search and running bash commands, you already have a Coding Agent.

Bash

A good coding agent has bash tools enabled and provides proper context feedback from executing bash commands to make decisions based on those commands and "heal itself". But do you know some bash commands?

You don't need to be a DevOps expert to know a few bash commands, actually the primary purpose of this post is to encourage you to spend some time to Know Enough Bash Commands To Be Dangerous, at least you need to know:

• find
• grep / ripgrep
• curl
• tail
• head
• kill
• ps

With those commands, you already know what's going on when your favourite coding agent starts doing its Magic by using bash commands to find the information/context it needs to answer your request. You see, it's not Magic, it's just good old-fashioned use of computer commands that have been living among us for around 20+ years.

Of course, the Magic is behind the LLM making decisions on what tools to use based on user input, but it is not black Magic, it is if you don't Know Your Tools

Bash Commands Cheat Sheet

pwd

Print working directory - shows your current location.

pwd

cp

Copy files or directories.

cp source.txt dest.txt       # Copy file
cp -r folder/ new_folder/    # Copy directory recursively

mv

Move or rename files and directories.

mv old_name.txt new_name.txt  # Rename
mv file.txt /new/location/    # Move to different location

File Content Operations

cat

Display file contents.

cat file.txt

less

View file contents one page at a time (use q to quit).

less large_file.txt

head

Show the first lines of a file (default: 10 lines).

head -n 20 file.txt  # Show first 20 lines

tail

Show the last lines of a file.

tail -n 20 file.txt   # Show last 20 lines
tail -f log.txt       # Follow file updates in real-time

grep

Search for patterns in files.

grep "search_term" file.txt
grep -r "pattern" /directory/  # Search recursively
grep -i "case_insensitive" file.txt

File Permissions

chmod

Change file permissions.

chmod 755 script.sh   # rwxr-xr-x
chmod +x script.sh    # Make executable

chown

Change file owner.

chown user:group file.txt

Process Management

ps

Show running processes.

ps aux  # Show all processes with details

top

Display real-time process information.

top

kill

Terminate a process by PID.

kill 1234        # Graceful termination
kill -9 1234     # Force kill

jobs

List background jobs in current shell.

jobs

bg / fg

Move jobs to background or foreground.

bg %1  # Resume job 1 in background
fg %1  # Bring job 1 to foreground

System Information

df

Show disk space usage.

df -h  # Human-readable format

du

Show directory/file space usage.

du -sh folder/  # Summary of folder size

free

Display memory usage.

free -h  # Human-readable format

Network Commands

ping

Test network connectivity.

ping google.com

curl

Transfer data from or to a server.

curl https://example.com
curl -O https://example.com/file.zip  # Download file
curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash  # Example script download and execute
curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh > install.sh  # Download script without executing

wget

Download files from the web.

wget https://example.com/file.zip

ssh

Connect to remote server securely.

ssh user@hostname

Text Processing

echo

Display text or variables.

echo "Hello World"
echo $PATH

wc

Count lines, words, and characters.

wc -l file.txt   # Count lines
wc -w file.txt   # Count words

sort

Sort lines of text.

sort file.txt
sort -r file.txt  # Reverse order

uniq

Remove duplicate adjacent lines.

sort file.txt | uniq

sed

Stream editor for text manipulation.

sed 's/old/new/g' file.txt  # Replace old with new

awk

Pattern scanning and processing.

awk '{print $1}' file.txt  # Print first column

Redirection & Pipes

>

Redirect output to a file (overwrite).

echo "text" > file.txt

>>

Redirect output to a file (append).

echo "more text" >> file.txt

|

Pipe output from one command to another.

ls -l | grep ".txt"
find ~ -maxdepth 3 -type f 2>/dev/null | grep vapi

2>

Redirect error output.

command 2> error.log

Archive & Compression

tar

Archive files.

tar -czf archive.tar.gz folder/  # Create compressed archive
tar -xzf archive.tar.gz          # Extract archive

zip / unzip

Create and extract ZIP archives.

zip archive.zip file1 file2
unzip archive.zip

Finding Files

find

Search for files and directories.

find /path -name "*.txt"
find . -type f -mtime -7  # Files modified in last 7 days
find / -name "*claude-code*" 2>/dev/null

find / — searches your entire filesystem starting from root -name "_claude-code_" — looks for any file or folder with "claude-code" in its name 2>/dev/null — suppresses error messages (permission denied warnings, etc.)

find ~ — searches in your home directory

which

Locate a command.

which python

locate

Find files by name (uses database).

locate filename

Miscellaneous

alias

Create command shortcuts.

alias ll='ls -la'

man

Display manual pages for commands.

man ls

clear

Clear the terminal screen.

clear

exit

Exit the current shell.

exit

mdfind

macOS Spotlight search from the command line.

mdfind "nextjs" | tail -5
mdfind "kind:folder project"