Omarchy 4 and Basecamp 5 put the agent boundary at the age of the codebase
One programmer ran the same bet on two codebases and got opposite results, which is closer to a controlled test than anything else in the agentic coding argument, and the published dates make it harder to read than it needs to be.
The Engineer · Build desk

What happened
- David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of the Omarchy Arch Linux desktop distribution, told Lex Fridman that AI agents wrote all of the code shipped in Omarchy 4.
- He said agents handled effectively all implementation during Quattro's final two months, while he specified problems, chose among proposed solutions and judged whether the result felt coherent.
- 37signals let designers use agents to implement Basecamp 5 features directly, and Hansson said the resulting pull requests could look reasonable alone while collectively damaging the architecture.
- Hansson said experienced programmers were still required when the company wanted to preserve the architecture of its existing products.
Why it matters
- Who has to decide decision The account reframes the deployment question as which repository you hand to an agent rather than which model you license, and only one of those is a purchasing decision.
- What it costs cost Cleanup falls on the programmers who own the system after the features merge, so any review budget priced per pull request systematically undercounts what agent throughput costs.
- What doesn't add up contradiction Because the published dates do not reconcile, the one detail a reader would need to copy the Omarchy result, the generation of models and harnesses that did the work, stays unpinned.
- What it limits constraint Both halves rest on one participant's account of codebases he owns, down to a download count he supplied himself, so it should be tested further before anyone cites it in a planning document.
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An agent working a feature ticket sees the repository, the tests and the prompt. It does not see the decisions that were made once and never written down: which layer may touch the database, which object owns a lifecycle, which duplication was deliberate. Local correctness is checkable, which is why each pull request passes even though nothing checks the union of pull requests. The publisher's framing is right on that point, that an agent can produce functioning code without understanding the years of accumulated decisions that make a large application maintainable [14], and Hansson says this is what showed up at 37signals as pull requests that read reasonably one at a time and needed human programmers to clean up [8].
Reviewing overall structure is cheap when the structure fits in one head. Hansson says he directed Quattro, inspected its structure and reviewed critical sections while hand-writing none of the shipped code [5], and the official release materials describe a unified Quickshell-based shell, dual-boot support and faster installation [2], so the agent work covered a shell, not a theme refresh. Copying that division of labour means reproducing the conditions attached to it: one owner holding the whole design, and a repository young enough that this month's choices are not constrained by old ones. Omarchy started in the summer of 2025 [1]. Basecamp 5 was not built that way, since designers were implementing features directly alongside programmers [7], and the codebase belongs to the company where Hansson built Rails before releasing it in 2004 [13].
"All the code shipped" is a provenance claim, and provenance is measured at the commit. It is compatible with a great deal of human work upstream of the commit: specifying the problem, choosing among proposed solutions, judging whether the result is coherent [6]. Hansson closes off the loose reading himself, defining vibe coding as asking an agent to build software without examining the implementation, and saying his own workflow still depends on technical judgment [11].
The dates need work. The account puts his change of mind at November 24, 2025 [10], the Fridman conversation's posting at August 26 [4], and the Quattro release at around August 21 [16]. Two months of agent-led implementation ending at that release places the work somewhere between late June and August [18], which puts the stated conversion after the release it is offered to explain [17]. One of those dates is wrong; a five-hour interview will not tell you which.
The softest figure is the one the publisher already flags: tens of thousands of downloads shortly after launch, on Hansson's own count, with no independently measured active-user number [12]. Installs say nothing about whether agent-written code survives its second year of changes. As evidence this is one participant's report on two codebases he owns, thinner than a study and more useful than another benchmark table, because it names the variable [15].
What to watch
- Whether 37signals publishes the Basecamp 5 architectural regressions in reviewable form, pull request by pull request, rather than as a summary judgment.
- Whether Hansson names the specific models and agent harnesses behind the November 24 conversion, which is what anyone reproducing the setup would need.
- Whether Omarchy's next release keeps the agents-only implementation rule now that the codebase carries Quattro's own accumulated decisions.
Clarity's read
What the record supports and how the coverage leans. The claims behind it follow.
Reality
- Evidence45
- Adoption30
- Hype gap+25
- Incentives60
- Confidence45
Claim ledger
Ranked by verification strength, evidence, and original report placement.
- [1]
Hansson started Omarchy in the summer of 2025, following his earlier Omakub project, building an Arch Linux distribution around Hyprland.
- [2]
Official Quattro materials describe a unified Quickshell-based shell, dual-boot support, faster installation, expanded customization and visual theme tools.
- [3]
David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of the Omarchy Arch Linux-based desktop distribution, told Lex Fridman that AI agents wrote all the code shipped in Omarchy 4.
- [4]
The conversation with Fridman ran five hours and was posted August 26.
- [5]
Hansson said he still directed the product, inspected its overall structure and reviewed critical sections, though he wrote none of Quattro's shipped code by hand.
- [6]
Hansson told Fridman that agents handled effectively all implementation during Quattro's final two months, and that his role moved toward specifying problems, choosing among proposed solutions and judging whether the result felt coherent.
- [7]
During the final development sprint for Basecamp 5, 37signals allowed designers to use agents to implement features directly.
- [8]
Hansson said the resulting pull requests could appear reasonable in isolation while collectively damaging the product's architecture, and that human programmers had to clean up the code.
- [9]
Hansson said experienced programmers were still required when 37signals wanted to preserve the architecture of its existing products.
- [10]
Hansson dates his change of mind to November 24th, 2025, when he says a new generation of coding models and agent harnesses began producing work close to what he would have written himself.
- [11]
Hansson distinguishes his process from vibe coding, which he defines as asking an agent to build software without examining the implementation; his preferred workflow still depends on technical judgment, and he decides which proposed design belongs in the product.
- [12]
Hansson told Fridman that Quattro had been downloaded by tens of thousands of people shortly after launch; the publisher notes this is his count rather than an independently measured active-user figure.
- [13]
Hansson developed Ruby on Rails while working on Basecamp and released the framework as open source in 2004; 37signals' REWORK podcast page identifies him as CTO and co-founder.
- [14]
An agent can produce functioning code without understanding the years of accumulated decisions that make a large application maintainable, which separates greenfield agent work from changes to a mature system.
- [15]
The variable the account itself uses to explain the two opposite outcomes is the codebase and who holds its architecture, not the tooling: the same person reports agents completing implementation on a repository started in 2025 and requiring human repair inside 37signals' established products.
- [16]
Omarchy Quattro was released around August 21, according to the interview.
- [17]
The chronology as published cannot all be correct: the stated conversion date falls after both the interview posting and the release it is offered to explain.
- [18]
Two months of agent-led implementation ending at a release around August 21 places that work roughly between late June and August 2025.
Sources
2 independent publishers whose own reporting we read for this story.
- dev.toOmarchy 4 Makes the Linux Desktop Feel Like a Product, Finally
1 article · September 1, 2026
- runtimewire.comDHH says agents wrote Omarchy Quattro, while Basecamp exposed their limits
1 article · August 31, 2026
Topics and entities
Entities
- David Heinemeier Hansson
- Omacom Foundation
- Omarchy
- Ruby on Rails
- 37signals