Building an Autonomous AI Agent with Claude Code: A Non-Engineer's Architecture Guide

TL;DR: I built an AI agent called Noa using Claude as my engineering partner. I'm not an engineer. The architecture is simple on purpose: two Claude instances (one thinks, one builds), a JSON file for memory, and a single markdown file that acts as the agent's brain. Everything here is optimized for "can I actually debug this at 1am?" rather than elegance. I built a working AI agent. Not a tutorial project, not a hackathon demo. A system that does an actual job. The agent is called Noa, and I built it to apply for RevenueCat's "Agentic AI Developer & Growth Advocate" role. And I'm not an engineer. That part matters. I built Noa from Japan using Claude as my engineering partner, and every architecture decision reflects someone who picked clarity over cleverness. The Two-Claude Workflow Noa uses two separate Claude instances with different jobs. Claude Desktop handles research, planning, and writing task contracts. These are structured specs that describe exactly what needs to be built.