Software engineering is evolving from line-by-line coding to managing fleets of AI agents. This new paradigm resembles a sorcerer casting spells, demanding skills in high-level direction, prompt engineering, and oversight, rather than manual implementation.

The creator of Claude Code's workflow is no longer about deep work on a single task. Instead, he kicks off multiple AI agents ("clods") in parallel and "tends" to them by reviewing plans and answering questions. This "multi-clotting" approach makes him more of a manager than a doer.

New IDEs like Gastown, with roles like 'overseer' and 'mayor' managing AI agent 'convoys,' reveal the developer's future. The job is becoming less about writing code line-by-line and more about high-level orchestration, prompting, and reviewing the output of specialized AI agents to complete complex tasks.

Top-performing engineering teams are evolving from hands-on coding to a managerial role. Their primary job is to define tasks, kick off multiple AI agents in parallel, review plans, and approve the final output, rather than implementing the details themselves.

Tools like Claude CoWork preview a future where teams of AI agents collaborate on multi-faceted projects, like a product launch, simultaneously. This automates tactical entry-level tasks, elevating human workers to roles focused on high-level strategy, review, and orchestrating these AI "employees."

The evolution from AI autocomplete to chat is reaching its next phase: parallel agents. Replit's CEO Amjad Masad argues the next major productivity gain will come not from a single, better agent, but from environments where a developer manages tens of agents working simultaneously on different features.

Experienced engineers using tools like Claude Code are no longer writing significant amounts of code. Their primary role shifts to designing systems, defining tasks, and managing a team of AI agents that perform the actual implementation, fundamentally changing the software development workflow.

The role of a top engineer is shifting from writing code to orchestrating multiple AI agents simultaneously. Notion's co-founder now queues tasks for AIs to work on while he's away, becoming a manager of AI talent rather than just an individual contributor, dramatically multiplying his leverage.

Unlike typical AI coding assistants that act as pair programmers, Codex's cloud agents allow a single founder to operate like a CEO. You can delegate concurrent tasks—coding, marketing, product roadmapping—to different AI 'employees', maximizing productivity even while you sleep.