Dev warns of append-only software: agents stack broken patches instead of fixing systems
_AustinCalvert_ · x · 2026-10-12
- A widely shared take from aboodman argues the agent era is turning software append-only: layers of somewhat broken code, with agents generating temporary fixes on the fly just to get things done rather than repairing systems properly.
- He invokes the sci-fi metaphor of A Deepness in the Sky, where ancient systems accumulate layers upon layers of patches.
- An attached screenshot shows a real example: an agent diagnosing Playwright's WebKit unpack hanging on libwebrtc.dylib under Node 26, then working around it by downloading the zip itself, extracting with macOS unzip, and adding the marker file Playwright expects.
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