AI coding agents are now the default
Bill Doerrfeld | June 25, 2026
Developer productivity is up 30% at Linear. My latest for LeadDev tracks their progress with AI coding agents.
Agentic coding tools have become the default. "When we've taken that away accidentally from people, they scream," says Tom Moor, head of engineering at Linear.
So what next? Well, AI assistance doesn't necessarily mean software engineering atrophy. Now, the focus is on scaling internal use of agents.
I recently connected with Tom to learn more about Linear's journey, from ad-hoc AI use to making tooling choices, and seeing the performance gains.
He shared a lot of helpful tips around optimizing context, adding guardrails, keeping an eye on costs, and using AI to solve the problems of AI.
Check it out on LeadDev! Also,
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