February 9, 2026
4 min read
By Alex Dobrenko
So there’s this article from StrongDM about how they build software with AI that boils down to No Humans Allowed. It’s dystopian and fascinating in equal measure, but most importantly: it’s maybe a sign of what’s to come for non-coding.
I had Claude summarize the article for me. There are six ideas in there. Here’s what stuck.
“Why am I doing this?”
“Why am I doing this? (Implied: the model should be doing this instead.)” — StrongDM
My thoughts:
My question would be sort of the opposite: Why is this task something I need to always do? And how do I get the model to do all the other boring stuff instead?
I don’t disagree with their framing! The only thing holding me back from doing more of this is probably… fear? Ego? The soft murmurs of my tiny human soul?
Scenarios, not tests
“Code must not be written by humans; code must not be reviewed by humans.” They replaced the word “test” with “scenario” — end-to-end user stories that check whether a real person actually gets what they need. — StrongDM
My thoughts:
Yeah this is probably the biggest unlock. Just talking to it like you’re talking to your friend. Be dumb, be clueless, be all of it. (I wonder if my own improv training is what makes it very easy for me to do this?)
Satisfaction, not pass/fail
They replaced binary pass/fail with “satisfaction: the probabilistic fraction of trajectories through scenarios likely meeting user needs.” — StrongDM
My thoughts:
I keep hearing this change from ‘deterministic’ to ‘probabilistic’ or, in english, from a binary Y/N to a ‘90% Y.’ That feels like the earth shattering thing that’s changing with all of this, in terms of how work is done and code (read: eventually everything) is written. You don’t need 100% success on everything, you need a good likelihood of success COUPLED WITH a strong “did it succeed for 100% sure” layer. Does that make sense? I’m asking myself mostly.
Deliberate naivete
They talk about “removing inherited habits, conventions, and constraints from traditional software development.” What was unfeasible months earlier is now routine. — StrongDM
My thoughts:
Yeah I agree lol. I feel like a little shit saying it, because I know how annoying it would sound if I were a software engineer hearing someone talk this way, but I do feel very much like NOT having baggage right now about how to do things is so so so helpful. Like I saw a tweet from someone about how they scaffold out the thinking of building something, a time zone selector, and I was like ‘why can’t you just… build it’? I know that the point this person was making was ’this is what you have to do because the code will get more complex and then you’re fucked,’ and they’re probably right and I will probably soon be fucked, but for now at least, at my level, it feels like the beginner’s mind of it all helps me move faster and do things.
Correctness compounds
“Correctness compounds rather than error.” Each good step makes the next step more likely to work. — StrongDM
My thoughts:
Feedback loops ftw!! And not just for Claude but especially for you! The more you teach Claude stuff, the more you learn how to teach Claude stuff. That’s the real learning, and it’s why I’m wary about automating the feedback layer too much.
Use it more than feels comfortable
“Teams should spend at least $1,000 on tokens daily per human engineer to optimize their software factory.” — StrongDM
My thoughts:
I guess this is also true for me given that I’m on the $200 a month plan for Claude Max, a fact I would’ve thought IMPOSSIBLE five months ago. But yeah, the value I get from it is maybe 10x that? Idk. Maybe I’m deluding myself. As Claude Code said this morning, I “have 43 slash commands and can’t send an email. The system doesn’t matter. The schedule doesn’t matter. What matters is whether you can sit with the discomfort of being seen and do it anyway.”
The article quotes above are from StrongDM’s Software Factory. My reactions are my own.