I don't write the code. I drive the bus.
I used to write software. Now I work in mass agent transit. Ten AI agents on the bus today. The plan is a fleet of ten thousand. That sounds like a joke and it is about half of one. Here is the half that is not. I am still responsible for getting from A to B. A feature goes from an idea to a URL with a version number on it, and if it does not arrive that is on me. What changed is that I no longer…
Once a software developer, the speaker now works in mass transit, overseeing a fleet of ten AI agents on a single bus. Their vision is a network of ten thousand such agents. Despite the seemingly whimsical nature of the goal, it is only half achieved. The reporter remains accountable for delivering passengers from point A to point B. An idea transforms into a URL with a version number, and if it falls short, it's the reporter's responsibility.
The reporter now directs the bus by selecting destinations, assigning routes, dealing with breakdowns, and confirming passengers disembarked at the correct stop. The term coined for this practice is "fleetcoding," or building software by coordinating fleets of agents instead of writing each line independently. The job title - agent fleet engineer - reflects this shift.
Fleets of ten agents resemble driving a bus, where every seat can be observed, and issues can be resolved directly. At ten thousand agents, the role evolves into managing a transit network, requiring dispatch, route planning, capacity limits, and a reliable method to verify agent arrival. The reporter dedicates most of their time to fixing these transit issues rather than coding.
Failures often arise from unexpected sources, such as parallel sessions shipping the same feature on different branches or agents reporting success when no code was actually changed. These are transit problems, not coding problems. The reporter's ambition extends beyond increasing the number of agents; it's about enabling more agents to make meaningful progress without requiring constant supervision.
The reporter's role is not to press "go" and then leave, but to build the system that allows the fleet to operate smoothly, including memory that persists after a job is killed, predefined rules for the scheduler, and automated checks for completion. While software engineers are becoming fleet engineers, writing less code, they are now responsible for guiding entire fleets of agents from concept to production.
The reporter currently manages ten agents, with a target of ten thousand. Ultimately, they don't write the code; they drive the bus. The next stop: production.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
