CTO Circle newsletter

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Building software is cheaper. That's not really up for debate.

The real debate is what that means for SaaS, open source, and software companies in general.

I think the best software is the kind that fits a customer's exact workflows and problems, and keeps evolving as those evolve.

Traditional SaaS struggles with that. Every customer is a bit different, but rarely different enough to justify changing the core product. At the same time, customers can't adapt the product themselves because they don't control the code. In SaaS, customers adapt to the product.

In the past, a company would only build its own solution if the problem was big enough to justify the cost and complexity of building, deploying, and maintaining software internally.

That threshold is falling fast. With coding agents, companies need fewer resources, and a smaller problem is now enough to justify building their own tools.

Still, building from scratch isn't always the right answer. Customers don't always know exactly what they need, and they often design poor solutions to real problems. In many cases, they benefit from guidance from people who understand the domain deeply.

That's why the best model may be a hybrid one.

Customers should get shared improvements by default: updates, fixes, and features that benefit everyone. But they should also be able to adapt the product themselves when they have specific needs, ideally with expert guidance when needed.

The hard part is making both worlds work together without creating merge conflicts, security risks, or operational chaos.

Interesting reads on this trend:

AI Agents Could Make Free Software Matter Again

Next 6 months: The Open Source revolution.

We started offering a buy-the-code pricing plan in pullpo.io

Claude code source code has been leaked. It's the source code for the cli tool, not the model weights or the backend. There are already great analysis out there explaining the full flow on how it works.

linear, the jira alternative for issue tracking, says issue tracking is dead. Since building is getting cheaper and simpler, less process is needed around issue tracking. They are now focusing efforts into coding agents, code review agents, and product desing agents.

Interesting read from Block after its controversial 4,000-person layoff: how AI can replace parts of middle management by understanding both internal company context and customer context, improving coordination, speed, and how work gets organized.

axios critical supply chain attack. The latest axios@1.14.1 now pulls in plain-crypto-js@4.2.1.

Pretext. 26k stars in 3 days. Pretext solves measuring and laying out text accurately without the usual browser slowness and layout glitches.

computer use available in claude code. Haven't tried it yet but seems very powerful: e2e testing, building native apps, interacting with 3rd party apps without api or cli...

@chuck shared When AI Writes the World's Software, Who Verifies It? AI can write code fast. The real challenge is proving that code is correct, and the article argues formal verification, likely with Lean, is the answer.

@dejaay shared Vibe Maintainer, where the author argues that open-source maintainers should stop fighting AI-generated PRs and instead build workflows to handle them.

@chuck shared this video around openclaw and what it means for saas, where the value is moving from the UI to the agent layer that controls identity, data flow, and model routing.

Thanks for sharing guys! If you are not in the slack community yet, feel free to apply here.

Proton is hiring an Engineering Director | London; Vilnius; Barcelona; Geneva; Paris.

Preply is hiring a Senior Engineering Manager | Barcelona.

Lighthouse is hiring a Senior Director, Enterprise Engineering | Barcelona.

JPMorganChase is hiring a Director of Software Engineering | Madrid.

TomTom is hiring a Senior Engineering Manager | Madrid.

KPMG is hiring an AI Director | Madrid.