Base Thread Demo

Concept

The Base Thread is the fundamental unit of agentic engineering:

┌─────────┐     ┌─────────────────┐     ┌─────────┐
│   YOU   │ ──▶ │  AGENT (tools)  │ ──▶ │   YOU   │
│ Prompt  │     │  Tool calls...  │     │ Review  │
└─────────┘     └─────────────────┘     └─────────┘

• YOU show up at the beginning (prompt/plan)
• AGENT does the middle (tool calls)
• YOU show up at the end (review/validate)

Key Insight

Pre-2023, you were the tool calls - reading docs, editing files, running commands. Now the agent handles the middle. You show up at the endpoints.

Measuring Base Threads

The fundamental metric is tool calls. More useful tool calls = more value created.

A base thread might involve:

• 10-50 tool calls for simple tasks
• 50-200 tool calls for moderate tasks
• 200+ tool calls for complex tasks

CLI Example

# Simple base thread
claude -p "Explain what this codebase does" --max-turns 5

# Base thread with output
claude -p "Find all TODO comments" --output-format json

Live Demo

I'll now demonstrate a Base Thread by analyzing the target you specify.

Target: $ARGUMENTS

If no target specified, I'll analyze the current directory structure.

---

Starting Base Thread...

Let me explore and summarize what I find. After this completes, you review my work - that's the Base Thread pattern in action.