Cole Medin

tom@tomrochette.com (Tom Rochette) — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Cole Medin is the AI-agent educator behind YouTube’s largest build-your-own-agent channel and the open-source Archon workflow engine, the video band’s tool-shipping tutorial slot.

His channel teaches agent construction by shipping agent tooling in public, which puts the value in Archon rather than in the videos: the tutorials are beginner-to-intermediate with sponsor reads, while the tool itself is a 23.7k-star MIT project the orchestration category already profiles on its product reality.

What it is
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A YouTube channel (youtube.com/@colemedin, about 228,000 subscribers as of 2026-10-15) plus a pair of open-source repositories, run by a developer who teaches AI-agent building through code-along builds. The breakout is Archon, introduced on 2025-03-03 as “an AI agent that builds AI agents” and iterated in public ever since; the orchestration category’s note records its product reality as a YAML workflow runner over Claude Code, Codex SDK, and local-model harnesses. The companion ottomator-agents repository collects his reference agent implementations. His stated upload schedule is at least weekly, Wednesdays on the channel description, and the archive shows 325 videos.

Status
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Active at high cadence as of 2026-10-15. The Archon repository shows 23,687 stars under the MIT license with a push dated 2026-10-15, so the tool side is under daily development. The channel is his publication of record: there is no blog or newsletter, and his written record lives in repository documentation and video descriptions. His agent-domain breakout, the Archon build-in-public series, first surfaced in March 2025, inside this section’s coverage window, which is why he qualifies as a new voice rather than an established one pivoting in.

Strengths
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He ships the thing he teaches: the Archon videos walk a shipped repository through successive versions, so a viewer can diff the claims against the code the same day.
The build-in-public format shows the failure states most tutorials cut: version pivots, rewrites of the agent-generation approach, and the migration from “agent that builds agents” to workflow runner are all documented on camera.
The ottomator-agents collection gives his patterns in runnable form, which makes his teaching unusually checkable for the video band.
His coverage of agent architecture (sub-agents, MCP wiring, task management, knowledge bases) is the most complete free build sequence available on the builder side.

Cautions
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Tutorial depth stops at beginner-to-intermediate: the videos teach construction patterns, not the verification and evaluation discipline the eval-focused members of this category demand.
The teaching carries commerce: paid-community (Dynamis) funnels and sponsor segments sit inside the tutorials, so tool recommendations need discounting against members who publish under no-sponsor commitments.
The tool-first lens cuts both ways: his architectural advice trends toward what a workflow runner can enforce, which reads as product marketing for Archon when the question is which harness to pick.
The reference repository is aging: ottomator-agents last saw a push on 2025-11-09, so treat it as a snapshot of his patterns rather than a live project.

Pricing
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Free to watch on YouTube. Revenue comes from a paid community (Dynamis), course funnels, and sponsor segments inside videos; none of the content itself is paywalled.

Compared to
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IndyDevDan: the two weekly video educators split by object of worship, Dan sells frameworks and a worldview, Medin ships an actual tool; take Dan for the conceptual stack and Medin when you want to read code.
Owain Lewis: both are clone-and-run builders, but Lewis builds software factories from existing harnesses while Medin builds the agent tooling layer itself.
AI Jason: Jason demonstrates finished workflows end to end at slower cadence; Medin teaches the construction underneath at higher cadence with lower polish.

Bottom line
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Recommended for engineers who learn agent construction by building and want a maintained, starred codebase to follow rather than opinions alone. Not for anyone evaluating harnesses or model choices, where his register is tutorial-enthusiast with commerce attached, and not as a substitute for the eval-discipline voices.

Changes
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2026-10-15 - Created as the video band’s tool-shipping tutorial slot, admitted on the in-window Archon breakout (March 2025) with all cited URLs fetched this run.

References
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https://www.youtube.com/@colemedin - the channel: stated weekly schedule, video archive, and the about-228,000-subscriber footprint (as of 2026-10-15)
https://github.com/coleam00/Archon - Archon: 23,687 stars, MIT, pushed 2026-10-15, grounding the active status
https://github.com/coleam00/ottomator-agents - the reference-agents repository: 5,790 stars, MIT, last push 2025-11-09, grounding the snapshot caution
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMXyDpnzNpY - the Archon guide video, grounding the tutorial format and the sponsor-segment caution
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjR5UsVGE60 - the 2025-03-03 Archon introduction, grounding the in-window breakout date
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Fpp4CBo14g - the multi-agent army video, grounding the architecture-teaching strength

tutorials on tomrochette.com

Cole Medin

What it is
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Status
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Strengths
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Cautions
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Pricing
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Compared to
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Bottom line
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Top 5 recommended reading
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Changes
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See also
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References
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tutorials on tomrochette.com

Cole Medin

What it is #

Status #

Strengths #

Cautions #

Pricing #

Compared to #

Bottom line #

Top 5 recommended reading #

Changes #

See also #

References #

What it is
#

Status
#

Strengths
#

Cautions
#

Pricing
#

Compared to
#

Bottom line
#

Top 5 recommended reading
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Changes
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See also
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References
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