People keep asking how companies like Ramp, Linear, and Anthropic ship so much software with agents. There is…
@karrisaarinen
People keep asking how companies like Ramp, Linear, and Anthropic ship so much software with agents.
There is no new SDLC or secret set of tools. The tools are increasingly available to everyone. You can build your own, use Linear, Claude, or whatever works.
The bigger difference is ambition. These companies encourage their teams to build more, experiment more, and let agents do more of the work. That's the main different between "AI native" or not. You try to use the technology to the max.
But don't get there by adopting a tool. You get there by changing what you believe your teams are capable of.
So in the very simplest way:
- let agents build
- make it easier and faster to contribute
- increase the ambition of what your teams attempt.
In practice, that means things like:
Standardize around cloud agents. Most of our code (5M lines last quater) is now written in Linear with our Linear cloud coding agent. Cloud sandboxes make standardizing the system and environment easier for everyone and enables faster contributions
Linear agent (with code access and cloud agent) operates in Slack too. If there is a discussion or someone notices a problem just say "@linear fix this" (decrease the time from something noticed to fixed)
As bugs, errors etc arrive in Linear, send them to Triage, and have Loop to auto-investigate (connect to tools like Sentry, Datadog), and write a fix
Let designers, PMs, non-technical people contribute code where useful. If they notice a problem, tell them they can submit a fix. If they want to try something, ask them to build a prototype.
Set up code review agent and system to make sure PRs are safe to merge.
Run security as an automation, have agents constantly try to find security issues in your codebase, as they find, send it to a coding agent
Instead of working on issue level, increase ambition, make a whole project, ask the agent to ask questions, investigate code base, create issues and have the agent work on the whole project at once. Set up goals like "give me proof that what you build works". All our PRs now come with screenshots and videos and preview build you can
Bring customer feedback to the system like Linear, and make it available for your team. At Linear every project now starts with 10-500 customer notes that influence the direction of the work, and which customers we should ask to test the solution first.
Set up Loops/automations to constantly update reference documents for agents, like product area/code owners so work can be routed to right humans
Then what is left is how do you set direction for your teams (initiatives, projects they should work on) and how do you review results (better code review, Linear does it with Guided Reviews), how you maintain quality/cohesion which is not a new problem either.
Basically most of the problems you always had remain, but the execution bit is now more and more solved.
At @linear we can help with automation, cloud agents, and code review, customer feedback and planning bits.
But we can't change your mindset or how your company operates.
If your company is still spending energy debating jira workflow steps, you're probably solving the wrong problems.
People keep asking how companies like Ramp, Linear, and Anthropic ship so much software with agents.
There is no new SDLC or secret set of tools. The tools are increasingly available to everyone. You can build your own, use Linear, Claude, or whatever works.
The bigger difference is ambition. These companies encourage their teams to build more, experiment more, and let agents do more of the work. That's the main different between "AI native" or not. You try to use the technology to the max.
But don't get there by adopting a tool. You get there by changing what you believe your teams are capable of.
So in the very simplest way:
- let agents build
- make it easier and faster to contribute
- increase the ambition of what your teams attempt.
In practice, that means things like:
Standardize around cloud agents. Most of our code (5M lines last quater) is now written in Linear with our Linear cloud coding agent. Cloud sandboxes make standardizing the system and environment easier for everyone and enables faster contributions
Linear agent (with code access and cloud agent) operates in Slack too. If there is a discussion or someone notices a problem just say "@linear fix this" (decrease the time from something noticed to fixed)
As bugs, errors etc arrive in Linear, send them to Triage, and have Loop to auto-investigate (connect to tools like Sentry, Datadog), and write a fix
Let designers, PMs, non-technical people contribute code where useful. If they notice a problem, tell them they can submit a fix. If they want to try something, ask them to build a prototype.
Set up code review agent and system to make sure PRs are safe to merge.
Run security as an automation, have agents constantly try to find security issues in your codebase, as they find, send it to a coding agent
Instead of working on issue level, increase ambition, make a whole project, ask the agent to ask questions, investigate code base, create issues and have the agent work on the whole project at once. Set up goals like "give me proof that what you build works". All our PRs now come with screenshots and videos and preview build you can
Bring customer feedback to the system like Linear, and make it available for your team. At Linear every project now starts with 10-500 customer notes that influence the direction of the work, and which customers we should ask to test the solution first.
Set up Loops/automations to constantly update reference documents for agents, like product area/code owners so work can be routed to right humans
Then what is left is how do you set direction for your teams (initiatives, projects they should work on) and how do you review results (better code review, Linear does it with Guided Reviews), how you maintain quality/cohesion which is not a new problem either.
Basically most of the problems you always had remain, but the execution bit is now more and more solved.
At @linear we can help with automation, cloud agents, and code review, customer feedback and planning bits.
But we can't change your mindset or how your company operates.
If your company is still spending energy debating jira workflow steps, you're probably solving the wrong problems.
