The really interesting part is what this system runs on. Spotify built Fleet Management back in 2022 to apply changes across thousands of repos. Half their PRs were already flowing through it before any AI was involved, but only for mechanical stuff like dep bumps and config updates. Claude Code is what let it understand what the code means, not just its structure. The thing nobody's talking about is that none of thi…
> a framework for applying code changes across hundreds or thousands of repositories at once Statements like this raise fair questions. Is there code duplication across 1,000s of repos, and why respond by increasing surface area further with bespoke tooling?
Now imagine you had the tools to do a diff across all those repos simultaneously, and classify, group, and review those patterns. What could you learn NPM teams and practices?
Now imagine you could pick best of breed, and propagate those back to all the other projects automatically to improve their productivity, security, etc. How fast would your productivity improve and your engineering culture change if everyone could automatically learn the best of what everyone else had to offer?
Companies like Spotify have sophisticated tooling for detecting repo changes and enforcing policy like that, and they run that experiment 1,000 times a day. Small evolutions in what was an identical build script, like a version bump, are detected, and if it passes a threshold it can be rolled out everywhere else immediately.
Having all the copies that you can sync up centrally periodically puts natural selection to work on internal best practices.
Basically, things work differently at scale. When the number developers you employ approaches a meaningful percentage of the total number of developers globally, your internal diversity starts to mirror the global diversity. So you have to manage that diversity. If you freeze policy entirely, you fall behind the global average. If you let things run wild, your company fractures technologically.
So, make a 1,000 copies, see what pops up, adopt and enforce things that look good, then do it again. Evolve to the next best place you can be from where you are.