You Need AI That Reduces Maintenance Costs
www.jamesshore.com/v2/blog/2026/you-need-ai-that-reduces-your-maintenance-costs
What Jamie wrote
Most folks just think about the cost of turning ideas into software, but the reality is that software lives forever and has a cost to keep it running. I've commented many times that companies put software as an "asset" on their balance sheet. Most technologists know that the reality is sofware is a "liability" that must be maintained and your team is the "asset" that you balance against that. So now with agents making software, if we increase materially the rate of software we are making, that maintenance must be dealt with.
The math only works if the LLM decreases your maintenance costs, and by exactly the inverse of the rate it adds code. If you double your output and your cost of maintaining that output, two times two means you’ve quadrupled your maintenance costs. If you double your output and hold your maintenance costs steady, two times one means you’ve still doubled your maintenance costs.
Provocatively I will say that I think agentic coding will result in software that is easier to maintain. Many bugs aren't resolved because they are just too hard to find and fix. If agents can do that faster, the bugs can get resolved. Plus agents are way better at getting deployments robust. And ultimately agents can babysit software for you. I've been building a new Discord agent and for the entire week I've had Claude Code not just coding it but running it. It is seeing all the logs, errors, anything on stderr and taking action. This is resulting in more maintainable software.