What Karl Marx Would Say About My Coding Agents

Loren Stewart, an engineer working on Every’s Slack agent, has built himself a software factory that can produce a new feature while he goes about his day. But handing off the coding also meant losing the trial and error that helped him learn and made the work satisfying. In today’s piece, he turns to Karl Marx’s theory of alienation to understand that loss and considers when to automate, when to supervise, and when to do the work himself. I think many of us will recognize this question, whether or not we write code.—Kate Lee

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For the past couple of months, I’ve been perfecting a code factory.

I develop a plan with an LLM, review it myself, and have another agent review the plan. Then the factory decomposes the plan into small chunks that can be worked on in parallel. My agents do nearly all the implementation work after planning. They use a browser and terminal to hammer out the new features, find bugs, review other agents’ work, and fix resulting issues. Changes go in only after they pass automated checks and a separate agent reviews and approves every issue.

I can start my factory, go about my day, and return to a new feature or an entire app. The result may be better than what I would have written myself. It certainly arrives faster.