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Building the platform for agent coordination — Tom Moor, Linear
Takeaway
Linear's edge in the agent era is being the pragmatic, high-bar coordination layer where humans and AI agents share work, not a rushed copilot.
Summary
- Linear's AI journey began in early 2023 with a skunkworks team using GPT-3, OpenAI embeddings, and PG vector on GCP — a pragmatic choice over the early vector-DB startup wave.
- Early shipped features: v1 similar-issues via cosine similarity, natural-language filters ('bugs assigned to me in the last two weeks that are closed'), and Slack-thread-to-issue summarization.
- Linear deliberately did not ship a copilot during 'copilot season' because quality didn't clear their bar.
- Now positions Linear as the operating system for agent coordination — used by OpenAI, Ramp, Vercel — where humans and coding agents share an issue tracker as the source of truth.
linearagent-coordinationproduct
Original description
Learn how we're evolving Linear into an operating system for engineering teams to ship product with agents as a first class citizen. About Tom Moor Tom Moor is the Head of Engineering at Linear, a company redefining how modern teams build software. Linear streamlines issue tracking and project management for high-performance teams like Vercel, Ramp, Replit, and Retool. Tom previously co-founded and scaled multiple SaaS startups including Abstract and Buffer. He draws on over a decade of experience building collaborative tools and design-led products. Recorded at the AI Engineer World's Fair in San Francisco. Stay up to date on our upcoming events and content by joining our newsletter here: https://www.ai.engineer/newsletter