# Raising the Baseline

> Source: <https://blog.gjmveloso.dev/posts/2026/07/08/raising-the-baseline/>
> Published: 2026-07-08 10:55:53+00:00

# Raising the Baseline

**Table of Contents**

I’ve been writing about

[AI (Coding) Assistants],[LLMs, Agents], and[Learning in the Agentic Era]. It might be relevant for this post –– or eventually outdated.

This week I was talking with family members about AI, one medical doctor and one commercial director. None of them had developed software before. All of them are now solving a lot of their professional *papercuts* with software produced by AI.

## The baseline has been raised

Producing software is easier than before. [November 2025’ Opus 4.5](https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-opus-4-5) moment is now cheaper with [Sonnet 5](https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-sonnet-5). We’re still navigating the exponential improvements on models’ capabilities and benefiting from the [current AI scaling laws](https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/ai-scaling-laws/).

| Model | Launch | Input ($/MTok) | Output ($/MTok) | Context | Max Output |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Opus 4.5 | Nov 2025 | $5.00 | $25.00 | 200K | 64K |
| Claude Sonnet 5 | Jun 2026 | $2.00 intro → $3.00† | $10.00 intro → $15.00† | 1M | 128K |

*† Sonnet 5 introductory pricing applies through August 31, 2026.*

`claude-api`

skill and fetching [Models overview](https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/models/overview)page.

Don’t get trapped. **This is not about producing software for the sake of producing software**. It’s all about **programmable outcomes at unprecedented speed**. Most of them through *software solutions*.

## You can’t avoid the hard part

Everything beyond a prototype or a * “selfish software”* is still constrained by human and operational laws:

**build the right thing at large settings is still ambiguous**. People still have opinions. A lot of people will have a lot of opinions. Communication, while increasingly enhanced by AI tooling, is still hard.

**Synchronization across humans is the bottleneck**.

Building things right is still hard. **Operational safety, security, availability, and reliability are still high-judgement engineering practices**. The *heavy-lifting* is being increasingly reduced by AI tools like [AWS DevOps Agent](https://aws.amazon.com/devops-agent/), Datadog’s [Watchdog](https://www.datadoghq.com/product/platform/watchdog/) and [Bits AI Agents](https://www.datadoghq.com/product/ai/bits-ai-agents/). It’s expected that major capabilities will keep getting better for the foreseeable future (although nobody can accurately predict 12 months+ ahead in terms of AI advancements).

Professional teams were taught and optimized to *manage* the hardest parts. Several times, that meant avoiding those completely. [You can’t avoid the hard part](https://xcancel.com/i/article/2073902681668931927). In [abundant times](/posts/2026/07/05/the-renaissance-of-abundance), **frontier teams are actively seeking out the hardest parts to start working with first**. Well equipped with AI teammates.

## Back to basics

**Fundamentals are still fundamental to a sustainable pace.** If you’re a net new *vibe coder* (and also a cardiologist) or if you’re learning single-page applications design patterns along with Netlify deployment options through Claude Code sessions (while being a medical imaging equipment seller during the day), **welcome to our industry!**

Second, ask Claude (or the agent you’re used to) to *gently* teach you about modern development practices and operational safety:

Gently teach me about modern software development lifecycle as if I was a

`[your regular profession here]`

. Focus on safety, data security, reliability, and maintainability. Don’t assume any prior experience in the software engineering field.

What a time to be building 🚀