Karpathy: Coding agent failures are user skill issues, not capability limits
Andrej Karpathy · Skill Issue: Andrej Karpathy on Code Agents, AutoResearch, and the Loopy Era of AI · Mar 20, 2026 · at 3:34
Andrej Karpathy, former Director of AI at Tesla and OpenAI co-founder, discusses why software engineers struggle with current AI coding agents on No Priors.
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“Even if they don't work, I think to a large extent, you feel like it's a skill issue. It's not that the capability is not there. It's that you just haven't found a way to string it together of what's available. Like I just don't, I didn't give good enough instructions in the agent's MD file or whatever it may be. I don't have a nice enough memory tool that I put in there or something like that. So it all kind of feels like skill issue when it doesn't work to some extent.”
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