37signals let designers use agents to implement features

37signals let designers use agents to implement features. Individual PRs looked reasonable, but collectively they degraded the architecture enough that human engineers had to clean it up.

Greenfield products have an AI-era structural advantage.

Legacy products carry:
architecture accumulated over decades
backward compatibility
millions of user expectations
integrations
organizational ownership
testing requirements
regulatory constraints.

AI reduces the cost of rebuilding much faster than it reduces these coordination costs.

That creates an unusual Innovator’s Dilemma:
Incumbents receive cheaper engineering.

Startups receive cheaper entire companies.

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