What kind of barrier/moat/network effects/etc would prevent someone with a Claude Code subscription from replicating whatever "innovation" is so uniquely valuable here?
It's somewhat strange to regularly read HN threads confidently asserting that the cost of software is trending towards zero and software engineering as a profession is dead, but also that an AI dev tool that basically hooks onto Git/Claude Code/terminal session history is worth multiples of $60+ million dollars.
There’s a difference between “this concept has value” and “a company can capture that value”.
I do see value in this, but like you I think it’s too trivial to implement to capture the value unless they can get some kind of lead on a model that can consume these artifacts more effectively. It feels like something Anthropic will have in Claude Code in a month.
There's no way this company is just a few git and claude hooks with a CLI. They're definitely working on a SASS - something else that isn't open source that this primitive is the basis of. Like a GitHub for agent code
> What kind of barrier/moat/network effects/etc would prevent someone with a Claude Code subscription from replicating whatever "innovation" is so uniquely valuable here?
You are correct, that isn't the moat. Writing the software is the easy part
git didn't succeed based on the mental model. It got a foot in the door with better tooling and developer experience then blew the door open when GitHub found a way to productize it.
I have never seen any thread that unanimously asserts this. Even if they do, having HN/reddit asserting something as evidence is wrong way to look at things.
HN is full of AI agents hype posts. I am yet to see legitimate and functional agent orchestration solving real problems, whether it is scale or velocity.
>what's the value of paying someone for a product like this vs just building it myself?
Same thing it’s always been. Convenience. Including maintenance costs.
AI tools have lowered the bar significantly on some things, so SaaS offerings will need to be better, but I don’t want to reinvent every wheel. I want to build the thing I want to build, not the things to build that.
Just like I go to restaurants instead of making every meal myself.
Right, but paying for food at a restaurant doesn't get me any closer to owning a restaurant. If promises are delivered on for these agentic coding platforms (which I do believe in), it seems the most reasonable path forward is to use those platforms to build your own platform.
It's somewhat strange to regularly read HN threads confidently asserting that the cost of software is trending towards zero and software engineering as a profession is dead, but also that an AI dev tool that basically hooks onto Git/Claude Code/terminal session history is worth multiples of $60+ million dollars.