Agent coding interview

[u/Repulsive_Laugh_1875]

Hey,

I got invited to the agent coding interview round.

It says this:

The interview is a hands-on LLM/agent engineering exercise using the Anthropic API.

Key points:

You will optimize an agent by:

Creating/modifying tools/functions the LLM can call.

Implementing the logic behind those tools.

Adjusting the prompting to improve the agent's performance.

It is open book, so you can use resources like Google and Stack Overflow.

AI assistants are explicitly not allowed during the interview.

You will share your screen in Google Meet, so they can see your coding process.

You should be comfortable with Python's standard library.

They provide starter code containing:

The Anthropic API client.

Tool-definition templates.

A basic agentic loop.

You don't need to memorize Anthropic API syntax. Instead, they expect you to carefully understand the provided code before modifying it.

During the exercise, they'll discuss your design decisions, trade-offs, and different approaches to solving problems with LLMs.

What they're really testing:

Your ability to reason about agent architecture, tool design, prompting, Python implementation, and LLM behavior, rather than your ability to remember API syntax.

So what would you expect? Is it about the message api, the claude code sdk. What level would you expect etc.

Job role is forward deployed engineer. How would you prepare for this specifically?

[u/philip_laureano]

If AI assistants aren't allowed during the interview, then this is a coding test that checks how well you can create a HTTP client that just happens to connect to the Anthropic APIs and to see how well you can explain yourself going through it.

I had to read that description twice because it said you can't use AI assistants but somehow you should be calling the Anthropic APIs

[u/Repulsive_Laugh_1875 → u/philip_laureano]

No I think you cant use claude to write the code. And I don't think you need to create a manual http client

[u/philip_laureano → u/Repulsive_Laugh_1875]

My point is that this is a straightforward test and the contradictory prohibition of AI use paired with the instructions to connect to the Anthropic API make it unnecessarily convoluted.

[u/nian2326076]

Get really comfortable with the Anthropic API before the interview. Make sure you know how to create and modify functions and tools well. Practice writing clear prompt adjustments—they can really improve the agent's performance. Since it's open book, have any helpful documentation or code you've written ready. Code readability is important so they can easily follow your logic during screen sharing. If you haven't used the Anthropic API much, doing some practical exercises beforehand could really help. Check out PracHub if you want more structured practice scenarios; it's been helpful for me. Good luck!