The Engineering Revolution: From Tools to Teammates
This isn't a manifesto. It's not a master plan or a whitepaper. It's just a story. A story about engineering, and where it's going.
The start
This isn't a manifesto.
It's not a master plan or a whitepaper.
It's just a story.
A story about engineering, and where it's going.
Part 01
The Past (how we built)
The first time you wrote code that ran - it felt like magic.
But the more you built, the more the grind showed up.
Late-night incidents.
Flaky CI.
Fixing the same bug twice.
Moving tickets instead of moving forward.
For decades, humans carried both the creativity and the repetition.
We accepted it, because that's what shipping software required.
Part 02
The Present (where we are now)
LLMs are writing code.
Tab to complete. Instant feedback.
Once you've used it, you won't go back.
But that's just the beginning.
The real power comes when AI moves into the cloud.
Where agents understand your codebase, your production, and your team's patterns.
Where they don't just autocomplete code, but pick up tickets, fix bugs, and open pull requests.
Where humans keep high agency on the creative front - not only in the IDE - with more time to design, solve, and invent.
AI handles the toil.
Humans stay creative.
Part 03
The Future (where we're going)
Tembo exists to bring this future to life.
Agents with true agency - able to plan, act, and learn, but always with transparency and human oversight.
Agents that resolve production incidents, optimize performance, patch vulnerabilities, manage deployments, and scale systems.
Agents that automate tedious and repetitive work across the organization - so you aren't stuck coordinating, triaging, or redoing the same tasks.
And this isn't confined to your IDE.
Or locked in a local loop.
It works across all your tools - GitHub, Linear, Sentry, Slack - always running in the background.
This is the future of engineering.
Not humans vs. machines.
Humans and AI, building together.
Let's build it.
Principles
AI should amplify, not replace.
AI agents exist to make humans more creative, not less necessary.
Automation with agency.
Automation should feel like a teammate - independent, contextual, and adaptable - not brittle scripts.
Production is the proving ground.
Software is only real when it's running. Agents must shine in the hardest environment: production.
Transparency builds trust.
Agents always identify themselves, show progress, and surface blockers. No black boxes.
Humans stay accountable.
AI carries tasks, but humans own decisions.
Practices
Keep humans on the creative front.
Engineers spend more time designing, inventing, and solving - while agents take the toil.
Close the loop with feedback.
Every correction makes agents smarter. Every PR review compounds.
Work across the stack.
From GitHub to Linear, Sentry to Slack - agents integrate everywhere, not just in your IDE.
Focus on high-leverage work.
Automate repetitive tasks, triage incidents, fix bugs - so teams can focus on strategy and innovation.
Start simple, grow powerful.
Easy to adopt on day one, evolving into a deep system of background teammates as you scale.
Hire Tembo as your next engineer
Your one-stop shop for background agents that handle bug fixes, code reviews, and feature implementations.