Essay · June 2026 · 26 theses · 3 horizons
It's not about AI replacing devs. It's about who holds power inside the software production chain — and who's about to lose it.
For decades, software development was bottlenecked by one simple question: who's going to implement this? With AI agents, that question loses force. The new question is different: who guarantees the AI understood the right problem, touched the right place, executed safely, and produced real value for the business?
The core thesis
AI doesn't eliminate software — it redistributes power within the production chain. Execution tends to get cheaper; judgment, more valuable. AI solves much of the implementation, but it doesn't eliminate ambiguity, accountability, risk, legacy, messy data, or hard business decisions. That's why the programmer won't disappear — but whoever only executes loses ground, and whoever understands, directs, validates, governs, and takes responsibility gains relevance.
