Building an Autonomous Coding Agent with Ollama and React

In the world of AI, "Self-Correction" is the holy grail. It's the difference between a chatbot that gives you a broken snippet and an Agent that finishes the job. Today, we're diving into how we built the Ollama Self-Correcting Coder.

The Problem: The "One-Shot" Fallacy

Most developers use LLMs in a "one-shot" manner: you ask for code, it gives you something, and if it's broken, you fix it. This is inefficient. A true agent should be able to verify its own work.

The Solution: The Reflection Loop

Our app implements a recursive loop that mimics the human development process: Code -> Run -> Debug -> Learn.

1. The Execution Sandbox

We use the JavaScript Function constructor to execute generated code in real-time. We intercept console.log to capture the agent's "output" and wrap everything in a try/catch block to catch runtime errors.

const result = executeCode(executableCode);
if (!result.success) {
  // Feed result.error back to the LLM
}

2. Persistent Memory (Lessons Learned)

The most powerful feature is the Memory Bank. When the agent fails, we don't just ask it to "try again." We ask it to:

1. Identify the root cause.
2. Formulate a generalized lesson (e.g., "Always check if an array is empty before accessing index 0").
3. Save that lesson to localStorage.

On the next attempt, these lessons are injected into the System Prompt, making the agent progressively smarter.

3. Local-First Inference

By using Ollama, we ensure that this entire process happens locally. No API costs, no data leaving your machine, and incredibly low latency for iterative loops.

Architecture Diagram

The agent flows through a state machine:

• IDLE: Waiting for a puzzle.
• GENERATING: Calling Ollama /api/generate.
• EXECUTING: Running code in the browser.
• REFLECTING: Analyzing failure if necessary.

This project proves that you don't need a massive cloud infrastructure to build autonomous agents. With a bit of prompt engineering and a local LLM, you can build tools that don't just talk—they act.

Github Repo: https://github.com/harishkotra/self-correcting-coder