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Garry Tan merged 14 PRs in 72 hours, adding 29,000 new lines and following a…

2026-05-12 · 09:00 UTC ·@Voxyz_ai ·1 min read

Brief

The post argues that autonomous coding agents create a 'ratchet' effect: repeated agent loops ship tests, docs, and evals with code, producing compounding, reliable progress. Examples: Garry Tan merged 14 PRs in 72 hours adding 29,000 lines; steipete ran 50 Codex instances to close 4,000 issues and released 'clawsweeper.' The author advises adding 'and write tests too' to Codex prompts.

Why it matters

Garry Tan merged 14 PRs in 72 hours, adding 29,000 new lines and following a 'ratchet' practice where each agent coding session ships tests, docs, and evals alongside code (pattern present in gstack).

Key details

  • steipete (behind openclaw) ran 50 Codex instances in parallel, closed 4,000 issues, and open-sourced the tool as 'clawsweeper', described as the same ratchet shape.
  • Claim: agents operate as loops that ratchet progress forward reliably (records/tests prevent human forgetfulness), pushing the complexity ceiling up; practical tip — add "and write tests too" to every Codex prompt.
Source evidence

this article is long but worth chewing on. tldr:

last week garry merged 14 PRs in 72 hours. 29,000 new lines. he calls this a ratchet: every agent coding session ships tests, docs, and evals alongside the code. each change comes out more solid than the last. the pattern lives in gstack.

i've been seeing this in a few places lately. three weeks ago steipete (behind openclaw) ran 50 codex in parallel and closed 4000 issues. open-sourced it as clawsweeper. same shape, basically.

side by side: agents are loops, humans are events. humans get tired, get distracted, forget. agents don't. or really, the records they leave don't. the systems that actually compound in the agent era are all this shape: every loop ratchets forward one notch, and nobody knows where it stops.

result: faster, more reliable, complexity ceiling pushed up.

if the article felt too technical: just add "and write tests too" to every codex prompt. been doing it this week, the project feels totally different.

Garry Tan (@garrytan)

x.com/i/article/205406266222…

— https://nitter.net/garrytan/status/2054064931515855118#m