# AI Coding Maturity Levels An 8-stage maturity model for AI-assisted software development, introduced by [[Steve Yegge]] in his "Welcome to Gas Town" article (January 2026). Describes the progression from minimal AI usage to fully orchestrated multi-agent workflows. [[Gas Town]] is designed for developers at stages 7-8. ## The 8 stages ### Stage 1: Zero or Near-Zero AI Maybe code completions, sometimes ask Chat questions. ### Stage 2: Coding agent in IDE, permissions on A narrow coding agent in a sidebar asks your permission to run tools. ### Stage 3: Agent in IDE, YOLO mode Trust goes up. You turn off permissions, agent gets wider. ### Stage 4: In IDE, wide agent Your agent gradually grows to fill the screen. Code is just for diffs. ### Stage 5: CLI, single agent, YOLO Diffs scroll by. You may or may not look at them. ### Stage 6: CLI, multi-agent, YOLO You regularly use 3 to 5 parallel instances. You are very fast. ### Stage 7: 10+ agents, hand-managed You are starting to push the limits of hand-management. This is where [[Gas Town]] comes in. ### Stage 8: Building your own orchestrator You are on the frontier, automating your workflow. ## Key patterns in the progression - **Trust escalation**: Each stage involves giving the agent more autonomy - **IDE to CLI**: The transition from IDE-based to CLI-based marks a major shift in workflow - **Single to multi-agent**: Going from one agent to many fundamentally changes the bottleneck from coding to design and planning - **Design becomes the constraint**: At stages 7-8, the agent churns through implementation so fast that imagining what to build and planning the details becomes the limiting factor ## References - Steve Yegge's article: https://steve-yegge.medium.com/welcome-to-gas-town-4f25ee16dd04 ## Related - [[Gas Town]] - [[AI Agents]] - [[Vibe Coding]] - [[Claude Code]] - [[Agents Mental Model]]