TL;DR
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Linear co-founder Karri Saarinen argues that software products reflect the experience, priorities and judgment of the people who build them. In his essay, he warns that agent-assisted development could make it easier to add features while making products less coherent; this is his perspective, not a report of measured industry-wide effects.
Linear co-founder Karri Saarinen has argued that software products carry the perspective of the people who make them, warning that AI agents and faster development could encourage feature additions without a shared product vision. In an essay titled “Someone behind the software,” Saarinen describes this as a concern about how software is built and shaped, not as a finding backed by industry-wide data.
Saarinen writes that products reflect what their makers have learned, what they pay attention to and how they decide a product should work. Customers may not know the people behind a product, he says, but can still sense the perspective in the result. He contrasts that view with a factory-like account of software development: collect requirements, build features and measure performance.
He says intuition at Linear does not mean choosing based on preference alone. In his account, it is judgment developed through experience: working on a problem, speaking with customers, making mistakes and learning what matters. Saarinen says conversations with people in different roles and organizations helped the company refine its own understanding before launch.
His concern is that software can become a collection of individually useful capabilities rather than a coherent product. Saarinen says adding features is often easier than rethinking existing ones, and argues that the result can feel messy when changes are made independently. He connects that risk to developers using agents to produce separate changes, while offering no measurement of how widespread the problem is.
How Faster Coding Shapes Products
The essay addresses a question raised by the growing use of coding agents: if software changes become easier to produce, what guides the choices about which changes belong? Saarinen’s answer is that human judgment and a shared point of view remain necessary to make separate capabilities fit together.
For users, coherence affects more than appearance. A feature can function as intended and still complicate the overall product, Saarinen argues. His view places product decisions, including what not to build, alongside implementation as part of making software that serves a recognizable purpose.
The argument is a perspective from a product company founder, not evidence that agent use generally makes software worse. It nevertheless frames a practical tension for teams adopting these tools: faster output may increase the importance of reviewing how each change affects the whole product.
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Saarinen’s View of Product Judgment
Saarinen grounds his argument in Linear’s own approach. He says the company valued intuition over process or data, while defining intuition as judgment informed by experience rather than an unsupported personal preference. He also says the company’s early customer conversations improved its perspective beyond the frustrations its founders had experienced themselves.
That account connects product character to ongoing decisions: what teams notice, what they leave out and what they continue improving after a feature technically works. Saarinen calls the accumulated quality the product’s “soul,” a metaphor for the care and consistency users can feel, rather than a technical property.
The essay also describes a change in how work may be organized. Saarinen says individuals working with agents can each produce changes independently, likening the process to small software factories. He suggests that without a shared perspective, those contributions may not form a unified product. The source does not identify particular companies or provide examples to substantiate a broader industry trend.
““Two teams can talk to similar customers, have access to the same technology, and make very different things.””
— Karri Saarinen, Linear co-founder
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How Broad Is the Problem?
Saarinen describes products as increasingly messy “to me,” but the essay does not name specific products, document user research on that perception or establish that agent use caused the changes he criticizes. It also gives no figures on how many teams use agents in the way he describes, or whether agent-assisted work produces less coherent products on average.
It remains unclear how companies can preserve a shared product perspective as more development work is delegated to agents and distributed among individuals. Saarinen presents customer contact and active judgment as part of the answer, but does not set out a tested process or quantify its effects.
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The Test Is Product Coherence
Saarinen’s essay does not announce a product change, research project or scheduled follow-up. Its forward-looking point is a hope: that making software easier will give people more room to understand problems and keep shaping solutions until the pieces work well together.
For product teams, the issue he raises will depend on what happens as agent-assisted development becomes part of everyday work: whether teams assess changes in relation to the whole product, keep learning from customers and revise existing features as well as adding new ones. The essay provides no forecast or measure for when that balance will be clear.
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Key Questions
What is Saarinen arguing?
He argues that software reflects its makers’ experience and judgment, and that a product needs a shared perspective to make its features feel coherent.
What does he mean by intuition?
Saarinen describes intuition as judgment built through working on problems, speaking with customers, making mistakes and learning from experience—not simply personal preference.
Does the essay prove that AI agents make products worse?
No. Saarinen raises a concern that independently produced changes could weaken product coherence, but the essay provides no comparative data or causal evidence.
What does Saarinen say helps products retain character?
He points to a clear product perspective, continued customer contact and decisions about what to leave out as well as what to build.
Source: hn
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