Carlos Perez warns that rigid agentic workflows suppress developer adaptability.
Everyone thinks AI coding tools set founders free.
Watch what people actually build with them: rules, approvals, process, layers. The same cage, assembled faster.
The tool that can scaffold anything in an afternoon will scaffold your bureaucracy in an afternoon too.
Speed of construction is speed of calcification. Build the thing that lets you create new things: experiences that didn’t happen before.
Positive users praised Garry Tan's warning on AI coding tools accelerating bureaucracy as the best take in weeks, while negative users dismissed the post as AI slop or bullshit agents replacing bullshit jobs.
@garrytan the tool doesnt have an opinion, it amplifies the one you already had. Give it to a builder you get ten products, give it to a process person you get ten approval flows. AI is a mirror with a compiler attached
@garrytan AI Powered Developers...
我感觉Garry Tan今天这条帖子有点戳破了AI编程的一些泡沫和幻觉。
很多人都以为AI编码工具会解放创始人，实际呢，规则，审批，流程，层级，同一座牢笼只是搭得更快了。
以前加一层审批要耗两个工程师两周， 成本本身就是免疫系统，不值得的东西自然活不下来， 但现在AI一个下午就能搭完，在构建成本归零的那一刻，复杂度就开始无限制的繁殖了。
因为构建的速度，就是僵化的速度。
AI其实会改变我们的心智模型， 只会把我们已有的东西放大， 控制型团队用它堆出更密的官僚体系，创造型团队用它跑出更多的新体验，这两种工具本身都没有立场，它只是一面带编译器的镜子。
所以我们别忙着用AI把旧流程跑的更快，可以试着去用AI删掉整个旧流程，去重新创造以前从未发生过的体验，不然可能就是赢了效率，输了方向。
Everyone thinks AI coding tools set founders free.
Watch what people actually build with them: rules, approvals, process, layers. The same cage, assembled faster.
The tool that can scaffold anything in an afternoon will scaffold your bureaucracy in an afternoon too.
Speed of construction is speed of calcification. Build the thing that lets you create new things: experiences that didn’t happen before.
I've really taken you hammering this idea to heart - I recognized that every new thing i tried building would suffocate the capability.
I FINALLY got something moving now that gives the agents the ability to realize their true ability aimed at the problem i'm trying to solve. Appreciate you!
@garrytan process used to cost two engineer-weeks per layer, so you only built what earned it. agents made process free. free process multiplies. the backlog was the immune system, now restraint has to be deliberate.
@garrytan AI will make people ship slower.
when every feature only takes a few hours to build, not a few weeks like in pre AI era, people delusionally think the opportunity cost of adding things is nearly zero.
it is not.
@garrytan The trap is when process becomes the product.
AI coding makes it cheap to add layers. The leverage is keeping systems open enough to create new behavior without losing control of intent, permissions, and evidence.
Working through this exact boundary right now.
@garrytan Best part of AI tools after coding is just shitting out documentation like nothing.
We used to have like technical writers and probably about 1-2 engineers worth of time spent across the team just filling out crap.
We've cut that down to like an hour or so a week.
@garrytan The cage was never the tool, it's us, reaching for control the second we get the speed. I catch myself doing it every time: build something in an afternoon, then immediately bolt on the approval layer like I don't trust what I just made
honestly this is so accurate. you give a guy access to an AI coder and instead of shipping a product, he spends the whole weekend configuring a 5-tier role management system and an audit log.
bro is basically building a whole digital civil service commission in his bedroom for an app with exactly zero users.
@garrytan Exactly. AI coding can make the old workflow cheaper to build.
But the real shift is not rebuilding more dashboards and approval layers faster.
It is giving users one place to ask, act, and understand what is happening across Gainsight, Salesforce, docs, and internal data.
@garrytan Not producing anything reliable or repeatable without a good harness, which means rules, process, etc. LLMs currently incapable of self governance in this area
@garrytan The cage gets rebuilt because cages are easy to spec. "Rules and approvals" prompt cleanly. "An experience that didn't exist before" doesn't ,you have to imagine it first. AI didn't change what imagination costs.
@garrytan the cage is a founder problem, not a tool problem. claude can ship a prototype in 20 mins but it cant fix someone who defaults to process when scared.
@garrytan What is wrong with bureaucracy? When the bureaucrats don’t add costs?
@garrytan some CLAUDE.md files in the wild are longer than the code they govern
@garrytan I agree ai tools and agents help build apps faster, but getting customers, improving product is upto us aka founders...
First thing is solved which is too build things faster but others are not...
@garrytan Half disagree. The cage isn't built by speed, it's built by accumulation. Construction used to be expensive, which quietly forced pruning. Now adding is free and removing is still manual, so process only piles up. Subtraction is the new scarce skill.
@garrytan best thing to do is make sure AI is aware of what you decided before; and obidea by it
https://github.com/tcballard/requirements-as-code/releases/tag/v0.10.3
@garrytan @ycombinator Great thoughts. Listening to your podcast, it seems you're pretty bullish about this ideology. Let me take a shot and see if you'll reply. What are your thoughts on: Infrastructure that makes machine-originated economic activity trustworthy and governable. Is this in the cage?
