The AI coding revolution is happening faster than most people realize. While developers debate whether Cursor is better than Claude Code, Tembo is focused on the bigger picture: we're not building better hammers for carpenters — we're building autonomous construction crews.
The Three Tiers of AI Coding Adoption
I see AI coding adoption happening in three distinct phases:
Tier 1: AI-Assisted Coding — This is where most devs are today. Tools like Cursor and Windsurf help human developers write code faster. They're excellent productivity multipliers, but they still require humans to drive every interaction.
Tier 2: AI-Guided Development — Here, by tools like Claude Code or Codex CLI, AI takes more initiative in suggesting architectural decisions and writing larger code blocks, but still operates in an interactive mode with constant human oversight.
Tier 3: Autonomous Background Agents — This is where we're headed, and it's where Tembo is strictly focused. Imagine your website throws an error, reported to Sentry. Instead of a human developer having to notice, investigate, and fix it, an AI agent automatically attempts the repair and submits a PR for review. No human intervention required to start the work.
Democratizing Software Engineering
Here's what gets me excited: we're not just making developers more productive — we're democratizing access to software engineering itself.
Today, if you're a CEO and find a bug in your product, you have one option: wait for your existing team to prioritize it. Tomorrow, you should be able to send that Linear ticket directly to an AI agent that takes the first crack at fixing it. Your team still reviews and approves the work, but the initial development effort happens without requiring expensive engineering time.
This isn't about replacing developers — it's about expanding what's possible. I believe the demand for software development will 10x over the next decade because AI capability removes traditional bottlenecks. Those legacy companies with tech debt that always say "we can't build that new feature until we clean this up first"? AI agents don't make those excuses. They just tackle the tech debt alongside the new feature.
The Platform Play: Why One Tool Isn't Enough
The dirty secret of AI coding today is that nobody knows which tools actually work best. Is Grok better at coding than Claude Sonnet? Is GitHub Copilot finally good, or does it still deserve its early reputation? The truth is, literally nobody has comprehensive real-world data comparing these systems because there's no platform that runs multiple agents and measures their performance.
This is where I see a huge opportunity. Instead of betting everything on one AI model, we're building a platform that can orchestrate multiple coding agents and intelligently route work based on what performs best for specific tasks. Think of it like Twilio for telecommunications — you could go around the world cutting deals with every carrier, or you could integrate with one API that handles global coverage and optimization for you.
We're building exactly this: a platform that can run your development work through Claude, GPT, Grok, or any other coding agent, then report back on which one actually delivered better results for your specific use case. If there's a model that does the same quality work but costs half as much, wouldn't you want to know?
The Mindset Shift
The biggest challenge isn't technical — it's psychological. I was talking to a developer recently who wanted to carefully curate what work to send to Tembo, saving most of the work for himself. I told him: send everything. If the AI gets it wrong, you can still do it manually. If it gets it right, you just got work done way faster.
This requires a fundamental mindset shift. Instead of being primary a code writer, developers need to become the wise critic and reviewer. Even if you're a 21-year-old developer, you need to step into the role of the experienced judge who approves or rejects engineering work.
Within five to ten years, 80% of code will be written by AI, and reviewed and accepted by humans. The value isn't in the typing — it's in the judgment, the architectural decisions, and the understanding of what the business actually needs.
The Middleware Moment
We're in a unique position because AI coding is purely ephemeral — it doesn't exist unless it's working. Unlike cloud infrastructure that has permanent IP addresses, DNS, and persistent state, AI coding has essentially zero switching costs. This creates an opportunity for a middleware layer that can adapt and optimize as the underlying models improve.
The big AI companies will build amazing coding agents, but will Anthropic build a tool that fairly compares Claude against GPT-4 and routes work to whoever performs better? Probably not. That's the opportunity for a horizontal platform that serves the customer's best interests rather than promoting a single model.
Beyond the Coast-to-Midwest Gap
As someone representing middle America in this space, I see a massive opportunity to help non-coastal companies adopt AI coding. These are companies with development teams that will be slower to move on cutting-edge tools, but they represent an enormous market that's being underserved by Silicon Valley solutions.
We're building for the private equity-owned company with a small handful of tired developers, who needs to scale to their product to work for its sister companies. Do they hire developers the traditional way, or is there a better path? I believe there should be a different path, and AI coding is going to create it.
The Road Ahead
We're still early. The technology is rough around the edges, and there's a lot of infrastructure to build around reliability, security, and measuring value. But the trajectory is clear: we're moving from AI-assisted development to truly autonomous software engineering.
The companies that figure out how to harness this transition — not just as users, but as platforms that make it accessible to everyone — will be the ones that define the next decade of software development.
The question isn't whether AI will transform how we build software. The question is whether you'll be ready when it does.
— Ry
