September 28, 2026
Users will be able to modify local software: David Heinemeier Hansson compares AI to the Reformation
On Sep 28, 2026, David Heinemeier Hansson compared AI to the Reformation. In January 2026, he wrote that agents were already making changes fit for production. Professional work remains collaborative work under human supervision.
DHH
@dhh
In his view, programmers became a priesthood: everyone else had to go through them to get anything at all from a computer. AI ended that monopoly just as the Reformation ended the clergy’s monopoly.
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In January, DHH contrasted earlier suggestions with agents that complete a task themselves while a person reviews the result and gives the next instructions.
A change of mode. At the start of 2025, AI did not help DHH with real code. In the second half of 2025, he often kept an agent’s output intact: the agent did about 80%, while DHH fixed the remaining 20% himself or through follow-up instructions.
In April, DHH wrote that AI makes it possible to add a feature to a local copy of an open-source program. In his view, changing an entire OS is possible on Linux, but not on Windows or macOS.
An independent ZEN Software review from Aug 27 described about 16 agents across four machines and the OS that DHH released in three months.
DHH recommends giving OpenCode with Opus or another model a real task. OpenCode runs in the terminal, switches models, and installs with `curl -fsSL https://opencode.ai/v2/install | bash`; after installation, connect a provider through `/connect`. Homebrew, npm, Bun, pnpm, and Yarn are also available. The OpenCode Go plan costs $10 per month.
In Basecamp 5, individual vibe-coded PRs were accepted one by one, but together they broke the architecture and required manual cleanup.
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