The 2026 Guide to AI-Assisted Development: Prompt Engineering, Agent Workflows, MCP, Evaluation, Security, and Career Paths for Current and Aspiring Developers (Merced Books on Agentic AI and Data)

AI coding tools went from autocomplete to autonomous agents in under three years. Copilot suggests lines. Cursor rewrites files. Codex closes issues while you sleep. The gap between developers who use these tools effectively and those who do not is growing every month.

This book bridges that gap.

The 2026 Guide to AI-Assisted Development is a practical, 80,000-word handbook for developers who want to do their best work alongside AI agents. Written by Alex Merced, Head of Developer Relations at Dremio and author of multiple O'Reilly and Manning technical books, it covers the full stack of AI-assisted development: from writing high-signal prompts that produce reliable code, to building MCP servers that connect agents to your tools, to deploying production-hardened AI features with cost controls and security guardrails.

What you will learn:

Write prompts and agent instructions that produce correct, maintainable code on the first try Configure AGENTS.md, Cursor rules, Copilot instructions, and IDE-specific settings for your team Build and consume MCP servers that connect AI agents to databases, APIs, and internal tools Design multi-agent workflows using the OpenAI Agents SDK and LangGraph Automate code review, security checks, and documentation with CI/CD agents Evaluate AI-generated code with promptfoo, benchmarks, and regression pipelines Secure agent applications against prompt injection, supply chain attacks, and data leakage Add observability and tracing to agent workflows with MLflow and OpenTelemetry Deploy AI features to production with rate limiting, error handling, and model version management Build a portfolio that demonstrates AI-assisted development skills to hiring managers Every chapter includes a self-contained, hands-on tutorial. No starter repos. No pre-built templates. You build everything from scratch and understand every line.

For working developers: Skip directly to the chapters that match your workflow. Each chapter is independent.

For aspiring developers: Start with the programming appendices (JavaScript and Python), then work through Part I.

For team leads: Read the evaluation, security, and career chapters for decision frameworks and staffing guidance.

The tools will keep changing. The patterns in this book will not.