“Now that we can build everything, maybe we should not?”

A great talk from @mitsuhiko, CTO of Earendil, who instead of software factories suggests to build software ateliers.
Or sort of workshops. Less software, but better, more ambitious software.

How many projects have you started recently? Exactly.

Over the past year, Armin said he started 141 projects. But how many does he regularly return to and maintain? Just 10–15. And that number hasn’t really changed.

Meanwhile, his agents went from running for a couple of minutes to 40+ minutes on longer tasks. The models got dramatically better, while the core tools in his Pi coding agent barely changed.

I think that adds to the high-functioning anxiety that I’ve written about recently. Because though we can build much more, our attention hasn’t scaled with the models.

What to do?

Armin makes a few good points:
- Learn when to push back against agents.
- Don’t confuse a completed task with good software.
- And don’t abandon collaboration and shared standards just because it’s now easier to build your own version of everything.

I think there’s also a bigger question here: if the cost of building keeps falling, how do we get better at deciding what deserves our attention?

Maybe that’s where the real skill is moving. From being able to build something to knowing why it’s worth building, and caring enough to keep it alive.