Amp is the coding agent and development environment that runs anywhere and everywhere.
amp-devs@ampcode.com
Joined March 2025
- Tweets407
- Following64
- Followers30.5K
- Likes1.2K
What is a company's culture? “What you promote and what you fire.”
@thorstenball on why mandatory code reviews and passive-aggressive comments won't stop slop, and agreeing on what you value as a team will.
“How do you not ship slop if everybody can just push to main?”
@sqs and @thorstenball answer the replies to The Company of the Future, and explain how Culture Stops Slop.
00:00 Intro: Tough luck, get the tokens
01:08 The responses to The Company of the Future
02:06 Don't meet people where they are
03:45 Self-hosted Orbs: a big architecture change without an RFC
09:16 Adapters are cheap now: customers fill in the last 20%
12:51 "You're only 21 people" is the point
15:58 Do what gives you energy & Quinn's secret Android app
20:44 macOS Satellites & capital-A Agile
27:21 A feature's whole life in one thread
29:26 Culture stops slop
33:21 No PMs in the middle & adopting a customer
36:54 Avoiding the everything app & not hiring your way out
40:43 A shared sense of urgency & removing features
46:29 "Why believe you?" You've got it backwards
48:29 Unit tests vs proof: videos & screenshots
53:53 The real cost of code review
58:17 Get to the tokens
1
3
1,020
Self-hosted Orbs: @thorstenball’s first design needed inbound connections. A customer’s security team said no. One Slack thread later, the news post became the design doc.
@sqs: customers solve the last 20% themselves, “or they just have their agent go and do that.”
“How do you not ship slop if everybody can just push to main?”
@sqs and @thorstenball answer the replies to The Company of the Future, and explain how Culture Stops Slop.
00:00 Intro: Tough luck, get the tokens
01:08 The responses to The Company of the Future
02:06 Don't meet people where they are
03:45 Self-hosted Orbs: a big architecture change without an RFC
09:16 Adapters are cheap now: customers fill in the last 20%
12:51 "You're only 21 people" is the point
15:58 Do what gives you energy & Quinn's secret Android app
20:44 macOS Satellites & capital-A Agile
27:21 A feature's whole life in one thread
29:26 Culture stops slop
33:21 No PMs in the middle & adopting a customer
36:54 Avoiding the everything app & not hiring your way out
40:43 A shared sense of urgency & removing features
46:29 "Why believe you?" You've got it backwards
48:29 Unit tests vs proof: videos & screenshots
53:53 The real cost of code review
58:17 Get to the tokens
Even for heavy macOS and iOS work, the agent only needed the Mac 35 to 40% of the time. So: a macOS machine the agent can use “like a sidecar.”
@hameonline had a prototype in about half a day. “Didn’t write an RFC, didn’t write another thing.” — @thorstenball and @sqs
“How do you not ship slop if everybody can just push to main?”
@sqs and @thorstenball answer the replies to The Company of the Future, and explain how Culture Stops Slop.
00:00 Intro: Tough luck, get the tokens
01:08 The responses to The Company of the Future
02:06 Don't meet people where they are
03:45 Self-hosted Orbs: a big architecture change without an RFC
09:16 Adapters are cheap now: customers fill in the last 20%
12:51 "You're only 21 people" is the point
15:58 Do what gives you energy & Quinn's secret Android app
20:44 macOS Satellites & capital-A Agile
27:21 A feature's whole life in one thread
29:26 Culture stops slop
33:21 No PMs in the middle & adopting a customer
36:54 Avoiding the everything app & not hiring your way out
40:43 A shared sense of urgency & removing features
46:29 "Why believe you?" You've got it backwards
48:29 Unit tests vs proof: videos & screenshots
53:53 The real cost of code review
58:17 Get to the tokens
A founder told @thorstenball they can’t work like Amp because they have sensitive data.
“You can now snap your finger and make tooling disappear… what tooling and what process would make you ship 50 times a day?”
@sqs: go “really aggressive” where agents help.
“How do you not ship slop if everybody can just push to main?”
@sqs and @thorstenball answer the replies to The Company of the Future, and explain how Culture Stops Slop.
00:00 Intro: Tough luck, get the tokens
01:08 The responses to The Company of the Future
02:06 Don't meet people where they are
03:45 Self-hosted Orbs: a big architecture change without an RFC
09:16 Adapters are cheap now: customers fill in the last 20%
12:51 "You're only 21 people" is the point
15:58 Do what gives you energy & Quinn's secret Android app
20:44 macOS Satellites & capital-A Agile
27:21 A feature's whole life in one thread
29:26 Culture stops slop
33:21 No PMs in the middle & adopting a customer
36:54 Avoiding the everything app & not hiring your way out
40:43 A shared sense of urgency & removing features
46:29 "Why believe you?" You've got it backwards
48:29 Unit tests vs proof: videos & screenshots
53:53 The real cost of code review
58:17 Get to the tokens
Can’t find time for something important, so you’ll hire someone to do it?
“Is it truly that important if you never get to it?” — @thorstenball
@sqs has a container ship analogy.
“How do you not ship slop if everybody can just push to main?”
@sqs and @thorstenball answer the replies to The Company of the Future, and explain how Culture Stops Slop.
00:00 Intro: Tough luck, get the tokens
01:08 The responses to The Company of the Future
02:06 Don't meet people where they are
03:45 Self-hosted Orbs: a big architecture change without an RFC
09:16 Adapters are cheap now: customers fill in the last 20%
12:51 "You're only 21 people" is the point
15:58 Do what gives you energy & Quinn's secret Android app
20:44 macOS Satellites & capital-A Agile
27:21 A feature's whole life in one thread
29:26 Culture stops slop
33:21 No PMs in the middle & adopting a customer
36:54 Avoiding the everything app & not hiring your way out
40:43 A shared sense of urgency & removing features
46:29 "Why believe you?" You've got it backwards
48:29 Unit tests vs proof: videos & screenshots
53:53 The real cost of code review
58:17 Get to the tokens
People kept asking for an Amp Android app. One Friday night, @sqs had the agent build one without telling anyone on the team.
He put the APK behind a hidden URL, collected feedback, had the agent fix it. “And now, we've got an Android app that a lot of people love.”
“How do you not ship slop if everybody can just push to main?”
@sqs and @thorstenball answer the replies to The Company of the Future, and explain how Culture Stops Slop.
00:00 Intro: Tough luck, get the tokens
01:08 The responses to The Company of the Future
02:06 Don't meet people where they are
03:45 Self-hosted Orbs: a big architecture change without an RFC
09:16 Adapters are cheap now: customers fill in the last 20%
12:51 "You're only 21 people" is the point
15:58 Do what gives you energy & Quinn's secret Android app
20:44 macOS Satellites & capital-A Agile
27:21 A feature's whole life in one thread
29:26 Culture stops slop
33:21 No PMs in the middle & adopting a customer
36:54 Avoiding the everything app & not hiring your way out
40:43 A shared sense of urgency & removing features
46:29 "Why believe you?" You've got it backwards
48:29 Unit tests vs proof: videos & screenshots
53:53 The real cost of code review
58:17 Get to the tokens
6
18
7,869
What if the agent makes an architectural mistake?
“Even if it does… are you stuck? Or is it now easier than ever to kind of undo these changes?” — @thorstenball
“How do you not ship slop if everybody can just push to main?”
@sqs and @thorstenball answer the replies to The Company of the Future, and explain how Culture Stops Slop.
00:00 Intro: Tough luck, get the tokens
01:08 The responses to The Company of the Future
02:06 Don't meet people where they are
03:45 Self-hosted Orbs: a big architecture change without an RFC
09:16 Adapters are cheap now: customers fill in the last 20%
12:51 "You're only 21 people" is the point
15:58 Do what gives you energy & Quinn's secret Android app
20:44 macOS Satellites & capital-A Agile
27:21 A feature's whole life in one thread
29:26 Culture stops slop
33:21 No PMs in the middle & adopting a customer
36:54 Avoiding the everything app & not hiring your way out
40:43 A shared sense of urgency & removing features
46:29 "Why believe you?" You've got it backwards
48:29 Unit tests vs proof: videos & screenshots
53:53 The real cost of code review
58:17 Get to the tokens
4
12
5,000
No PR review, 1 meeting, anyone can push to main. @thorstenball asks: how do you avoid slop?
@sqs: skin in the game. “We have 21 co-founders at Amp… every single person is a public face.” And anyone can ask, “What the slop is that?”
“How do you not ship slop if everybody can just push to main?”
@sqs and @thorstenball answer the replies to The Company of the Future, and explain how Culture Stops Slop.
00:00 Intro: Tough luck, get the tokens
01:08 The responses to The Company of the Future
02:06 Don't meet people where they are
03:45 Self-hosted Orbs: a big architecture change without an RFC
09:16 Adapters are cheap now: customers fill in the last 20%
12:51 "You're only 21 people" is the point
15:58 Do what gives you energy & Quinn's secret Android app
20:44 macOS Satellites & capital-A Agile
27:21 A feature's whole life in one thread
29:26 Culture stops slop
33:21 No PMs in the middle & adopting a customer
36:54 Avoiding the everything app & not hiring your way out
40:43 A shared sense of urgency & removing features
46:29 "Why believe you?" You've got it backwards
48:29 Unit tests vs proof: videos & screenshots
53:53 The real cost of code review
58:17 Get to the tokens
@thorstenball hears it all the time: “Of course, you work like this because you’re only 21 people.”
@sqs: “If you have a feature request or bug report and then it gets shipped in 30 minutes… I don’t think you care that we're 21 people.”
“How do you not ship slop if everybody can just push to main?”
@sqs and @thorstenball answer the replies to The Company of the Future, and explain how Culture Stops Slop.
00:00 Intro: Tough luck, get the tokens
01:08 The responses to The Company of the Future
02:06 Don't meet people where they are
03:45 Self-hosted Orbs: a big architecture change without an RFC
09:16 Adapters are cheap now: customers fill in the last 20%
12:51 "You're only 21 people" is the point
15:58 Do what gives you energy & Quinn's secret Android app
20:44 macOS Satellites & capital-A Agile
27:21 A feature's whole life in one thread
29:26 Culture stops slop
33:21 No PMs in the middle & adopting a customer
36:54 Avoiding the everything app & not hiring your way out
40:43 A shared sense of urgency & removing features
46:29 "Why believe you?" You've got it backwards
48:29 Unit tests vs proof: videos & screenshots
53:53 The real cost of code review
58:17 Get to the tokens
7
17
3,581
“I haven’t looked at a unit test in a while.”
@thorstenball trusts the model and checks the proof instead. He knows it’s “the dumbest possible answer to give somebody who calls themselves an engineer.”
@sqs: “I think it’s just been upleveled.”
“How do you not ship slop if everybody can just push to main?”
@sqs and @thorstenball answer the replies to The Company of the Future, and explain how Culture Stops Slop.
00:00 Intro: Tough luck, get the tokens
01:08 The responses to The Company of the Future
02:06 Don't meet people where they are
03:45 Self-hosted Orbs: a big architecture change without an RFC
09:16 Adapters are cheap now: customers fill in the last 20%
12:51 "You're only 21 people" is the point
15:58 Do what gives you energy & Quinn's secret Android app
20:44 macOS Satellites & capital-A Agile
27:21 A feature's whole life in one thread
29:26 Culture stops slop
33:21 No PMs in the middle & adopting a customer
36:54 Avoiding the everything app & not hiring your way out
40:43 A shared sense of urgency & removing features
46:29 "Why believe you?" You've got it backwards
48:29 Unit tests vs proof: videos & screenshots
53:53 The real cost of code review
58:17 Get to the tokens
Why doesn't Amp have PR support? Because building for where you are today means that in six months “we also make you look like a bozo in your company, and we waste a lot of your time.”
@sqs and @thorstenball on walking the frontier instead.
“How do you not ship slop if everybody can just push to main?”
@sqs and @thorstenball answer the replies to The Company of the Future, and explain how Culture Stops Slop.
00:00 Intro: Tough luck, get the tokens
01:08 The responses to The Company of the Future
02:06 Don't meet people where they are
03:45 Self-hosted Orbs: a big architecture change without an RFC
09:16 Adapters are cheap now: customers fill in the last 20%
12:51 "You're only 21 people" is the point
15:58 Do what gives you energy & Quinn's secret Android app
20:44 macOS Satellites & capital-A Agile
27:21 A feature's whole life in one thread
29:26 Culture stops slop
33:21 No PMs in the middle & adopting a customer
36:54 Avoiding the everything app & not hiring your way out
40:43 A shared sense of urgency & removing features
46:29 "Why believe you?" You've got it backwards
48:29 Unit tests vs proof: videos & screenshots
53:53 The real cost of code review
58:17 Get to the tokens
“Imagine you could snap your finger and working with data would be now your dream setup.”
@thorstenball: with agents, you can finally build the tooling you used to brush off.
21 people, a single meeting a week, no quarterly goals, no pull requests, no mandatory code review, no titles (except one dictator), a hundred releases a day, bugs fixed in minutes, famous for killing features.
@sqs and @thorstenball on how the Amp team works: