From Zero to Full App in Minutes with nora, the Coding Agent I Luke Wang

Thu, Oct 2, 2025, 12:00 AM

Luke Wang presents Nora, an AI coding agent integrated into an IDE (currently a VS Code fork), designed to rapidly build full-stack web3 applications, especially in Solidity and other blockchain languages. Nora leverages foundational LLMs (like Claude, Gemini) with post-training reinforcement learning for web3-specific tasks, enabling users to generate, debug, and iterate on smart contracts and dApps with minimal human intervention. The demo showcases creating a cross-chain vault app from scratch, highlighting Nora’s self-correcting abilities, security best practices, and support for multiple chains (e.g., Ethereum mainnet, Base L2) and frameworks (e.g., LayerZero). Nora indexes codebases for context, supports prompt engineering for better results, and is optimized for Mac/Linux (Windows experimental). Future plans include CLI and API versions, broader language/framework support, and enhanced developer tooling. Nora accelerates prototyping, reduces manual coding, and empowers both novices and experts to build complex web3 apps efficiently. 00:00 Introduction 00:28 What is Nora? Overview & Form Factor 00:55 Live Demo: Building a Cross-Chain Vault 02:13 Error Handling & Self-Correction 03:18 Reviewing the Generated App 04:30 Editing and Iterating with Nora 05:35 Q&A: Model Tuning and Performance 06:26 Security, Verifiability, and Determinism 07:34 Prompt Engineering Tips 10:07 Coding with AI: Best Practices 11:24 Codebase Indexing & Context 12:17 Generation Accuracy & Domain Understanding 13:18 Foundational Models & Post-Training 14:45 Use Cases & Model Selection 15:39 Open Source vs Closed Source Models 16:49 IDE, Traces, and Judging 18:08 Human Creativity & AI Execution 19:44 Complex Apps & Human Intervention 20:48 Chainlink, Oracles, and Integration 21:19 Platform Support: Mac, Linux, Windows 22:15 Demo Recap & Usage Quotas 24:01 Reinforcement Learning & Backend 24:39 IDE Fork vs Plugin, CLI/API Plans 25:31 Language & Framework Support 26:03 Closing & Support Channels _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🇺🇸 *ETHGlobal New York* This workshop is specifically for ETHGlobal New York, a 3-day hackathon held August 15-17, bringing together the most skilled web3 developers, designers and product builders from all around the globe for a weekend-long adventure to advance the Ethereum ecosystem! Watch the full ETHGlobal New York 2025 playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXzKMXK2aHh4Xze0ZeSWCSGsw25clPpvZ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow Nora X: https://x.com/mynoraai ✅ *Follow ETHGlobal* X: https://x.com/ETHGlobal​ Warpcast: https://warpcast.com/ethglobal Website: https://ethglobal.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ETHGlobal _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _Are you interested in Ethereum development and entrepreneurship?_ 👉 Sign up for the next ETHGlobal event: https://ethglobal.com/events 🎁 Get exclusive access and perks with ETHGlobal Plus! https://ethglobal.com/plus 📣 Want us to throw an event in your city? Tell us where! https://ethglobal.com/city _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _