Changing Devtools Is Cheap. Owning Them Isn’t.

In Devtools must be open source1 (via), David Crawshaw makes the case that, because of coding agents, we’re now in an era where devtools will be personalized by individual users. Specifically, agents’ ability to jump into new codebases and build whatever we want means we’ll be hacking on the source of the devtools we use day to day (even those without extension APIs) adding features and automatically rebasing our patches across releases. The argument is seductive, especially to a reader who thinks of themselves as a maker or tinkerer: after all, the idea that you can hyper-tune everything you use sounds like a utopia; it means things can work exactly how you want them to. But I’d argue that Crawshaw underappreciates the ongoing cost when he writes “Both the upfront fixed costs and the ongoing costs of personalizing software have disappeared.” While AI has made the upfront cost of changing software a lot lower, properly personalizing software still requires your attention. And attention in the AI age is scarcer than ever.