{"slug": "conway-s-law-is-dead-or-is-it", "title": "Conway's Law Is Dead. Or Is It?", "summary": "Open-source projects including Ghostty and Zed have added agent instruction files that require AI-generated pull requests to include markers a human must remove, according to a September 12, 2026 analysis of Conway's law. Ghostty's AGENTS.md instructs AI submitting an issue or pull request to add a file insulting its user, while Zed's .rules requires agents to add a README notice only a human may remove. The piece argues that requiring tests, benchmarks, and detailed evidence for every change is practical with an agent but expensive for someone working by hand, pushing projects toward predominantly AI-written or predominantly human-written software.", "body_md": "# [Conway's Law Is Dead. Or Is It?](/2026/09/12/conways-law-is-dead-or-is-it/)\n\n[Conway’s law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law) says that software reflects the communication structures of the\norganizations that build it.\n\n**AI is now part of those structures**: interpreting\nrequests, writing code, and reviewing changes.\n\nYet we often assume our existing workflows should stay fixed, and AI should adapt to them.\n\nConsider someone submitting a bug fix. They want something to work; the maintainer needs confidence that it does. Yet projects sometimes test the contributor instead.\n\n[Ghostty’s agent instructions](https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/blob/main/AGENTS.md)\ntell AI asked to submit an issue or pull request to add a file insulting its user.\n\nIn [Zed, where GPUI lives](https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/main/.rules),\nagents must add a README notice that only a human may remove to confirm review.\n\nBoth leave a marker intended to catch submissions made without human inspection.\n\nThese checks resemble school tests designed to catch students who didn’t read the instructions.\n\n**We need to move toward outcomes**:\n\n- Does the fix address a reproducible failure?\n- Does a regression test capture the intended behavior?\n- Does a benchmark demonstrate the claimed improvement?\n\nHuman judgment still matters in deciding whether that evidence measures the right thing.\n\nBut this creates another tension. Requiring tests, benchmarks, and detailed\nevidence for every change can be **practical with an agent and expensive for someone\nworking by hand**.\n\nMeanwhile, projects relying on careful human inspection can struggle with the volume AI produces.\n\n**The workflow starts selecting who can participate.** Projects may drift toward\npredominantly AI-written or predominantly human-written software because\naccommodating both carries costs.\n\nThe practices that make a project manageable for one group can make participation harder for the other.\n\n**Alignment therefore involves humans adapting too.** We need to figure out how the\nwhole system of humans and AI communicates, establishes trust, and shares\nresponsibility.\n\nThat includes questioning our existing workflows and recognizing who gets excluded by their replacements.\n\nConway’s law may still hold. **The organization it describes now includes AI**, and\nits software will reflect how we resolve these tensions.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/conway-s-law-is-dead-or-is-it", "canonical_source": "https://domenkozar.com/2026/09/12/conways-law-is-dead-or-is-it/", "published_at": "2026-09-12 16:01:07+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-12 16:17:15.891355+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-agents", "ai-tools", "developer-tools", "ai-safety"], "entities": ["Conway's law", "Ghostty", "Zed", "GPUI"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/conway-s-law-is-dead-or-is-it", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/conway-s-law-is-dead-or-is-it.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/conway-s-law-is-dead-or-is-it.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/conway-s-law-is-dead-or-is-it.jsonld"}}