Yegge's Developer-Agent Evolution Model - Justin Abrahms

An 8-stage model describing how developers evolve from skeptical AI-assisted coding to orchestrating fleets of autonomous agents.

In Welcome to Gas Town , Steve Yegge generated a list of the 8 stages of agentic workflow evolution. I find myself wanting to deep link to it, so I’m replicating it here. If you want the tool itself rather than the model, I’ve written up what Gas Town is and how it works. Stage 1: Zero or Near-Zero AI: maybe code completions, sometimes ask Chat questions Stage 2: Coding agent in IDE, permissions turned on. A narrow coding agent in a sidebar asks your permission to run tools. Stage 3: Agent in IDE, YOLO mode: Trust goes up. You turn off permissions, agent gets wider. Stage 4: In IDE, wide…

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