Continuing Tollens, solo

A short update on where Tollens is, because a few things have changed.

Edmund and Martin have moved on from Tollens to a new opportunity. That is their news to share, but I will say that for me it is actually a validation of the Tollens thesis. We are in a new world of AI-native, agentic engineering, where a small number of people, or even one person, can take on problems that used to need a whole team. I’m really excited to see where they are going to take that project.

So I am continuing Tollens as a solo builder. The past few months have shown me that with the help of AI tooling, and some of our own philosophy, the development velocity that one person can now reach is something we haven’t seen before.

What Tollens is about has not changed. Coding agents can write code - we’ve known this for months. Recent releases mean that coding agents can also take a decent attempt at testing, planning, delegating tasks and orchestrating your workflows. But it’s still the case that most people who try to get an agent to build something real grapple with a familiar feeling: it produces something, and it is not good - not what you wanted, shortcuts get taken, testing is not thorough and it just didn’t understand your requirements. You correct it, you point out what is wrong, you keep iterating - but the agents can just keep getting it wrong in frustrating ways. You can feel that it is off, but explaining why with clarity, knowing how to make it good systematically, and getting an agent to actually do that, are genuinely hard problems.

That gap, between the AI can write all the code and the software is actually good for what you want, is what I am building for. Good for what you want is what I mean by quality: value to the people who actually matter. And I want it to be achievable with just as much ease as asking for that first prototype in the first place.

The plan and the roadmap are being reworked for a team of one, and I will be sharing much more of that in the open than I have been. This is something I’m really looking forward to. If this is a problem you feel too, follow along. I would love your eyes on it as it takes shape.