I Was Dead Set Against This Feature (Then I Shipped It)

Episode Summary

Dave was dead set against building a Human-in-the-Loop mode for Shipwright — then Dan shipped it overnight using autonomous agents, and Dave came around completely. This episode is the story of why they built it: a low-risk on-ramp that lets AI-nervous teams watch autonomous coding happen, approve each step, and build trust before handing over the keys.

Key Topics

• Why Human-in-the-Loop exists — meeting teams that are nervous about AI escaping the sandbox or leaking secrets
• The three ways to try Shipwright: Claude Code plugins (one task at a time) → local Human-in-the-Loop → fully autonomous in your own cloud
• The feature was built by autonomous agents overnight — the medium is the message
• Trust as the real product: HITL is a confidence-builder, not the destination
• Laptop vs. cloud permissions — why you'd never run full-autonomous on a machine holding all your tokens
• Getting developers out of the terminal without taking away the safety of watching

Notable Quotes

• "I was dead set against this... and now I'm going the opposite."
• "You don't write code anymore. That's the real experience."
• "Turn your phone off, go boating, and a day later it's shipped."

About The Velocity Lab

Dave O'Dell and Dan McAulay work inside engineering organizations every day helping them ship faster with AI. No hype, no BS — just what's working in the field.

Subscribe: RSS