Reading up on 37signals
18 deep · digging since dec 02, 25
- Thinking in Systems, Shipping in Loops
AI has eliminated manual coding, shifting software engineering to designing verification loops and system architecture, as evidenced by high PR throughput at Artemis and SpaceXAI.
- Rails World 2026 Opening Keynote - DHH
DHH’s Rails World 2026 keynote reveals Hey’s backend rewritten in Rust by AI agents, cutting needs from 110 to 10 servers and hinting at Rails’ declining role.
- Omarchy: Linux Finally Reached My Desk
Omarchy treats the Linux desktop as a platform product with curated defaults and agent legibility, making an old ThinkPad work in minutes.
- $5300 in $100s: The verdict
Jason Fried reports a $100 refundable‑ticket event drew 55 sign‑ups, 50 attendees (90% show‑rate), doubling the prior free event’s attendance and yielding $500 for donation.
- The 37signals Manager Playbook
The article outlines 37signals' internal manager playbook, detailing their practices for effective leadership, team communication, and productivity in a remote‑first software company.
- 37signals Isn't Smarter Than You, But They Are Different
37signals achieves clean code by keeping teams small, cutting scope, and hiring top engineers, a strategy most companies cannot adopt due to feature-driven revenue models.
- Fizzy Design Evolution: A Flipbook from Git
The article describes a technical process extracting Fizzy's daily git screenshots and scoring a flipbook video with Claude-composed music from the app's own audio samples.
- Vanilla CSS is all you need
37signals builds complex web apps with vanilla CSS, no build tools, proving modern CSS features are sufficient for production.
Takes
Where does one find people like this? I’d love to have an army of them at 37signals - or just one to start - but I’ve found everyone claims they can do everything but very few can actually do anything.
@jasonfried
👋 I'm looking for my next role (open to contracts too). ~20 years of Ruby/Rails, plus Swift/iOS and lots of hands-on LLM work. Co-founded Hello Weather; previously 37signals, Clearbit, IFTTT. Chicago or remote. DMs open, or [email protected] ✨
@trevorturk
I'm proud to welcome @robzolkos to 37signals! Rob's a perfect, modern example of how to land an opportunity at a company you like. Rob never applied for a job here. We weren't, and aren't, hiring. He just applied himself and, in doing that, made himself impossible to ignore. He really caught our attention early when he started exploring Fizzy:
@jasonfried
Omarchy Quattro is already the #3 Linux distro by active 1Password users. Even crazier, on the weekends it's #1, beating out Ubuntu for the first time on Saturday. This is just TWO weeks after it launched!
@jmeller
We just published our internal 37signals Manager Playbook.
@jasonfried
Whenever someone gets promoted at 37signals, we post a company-wide message in Basecamp so everyone knows. Here's a real example of a message that covers two promotions (Silvia and Lewis):
@jasonfried
just ran Claude Fable 5 over @37signals open source Rails code again extracted all the key insights for writing @dhh-like vanilla Rails into reusable guides and skills just drop it in your skills folder and your AI agent will automatically reference it https://github.com/marckohlbrugge/37signals-skills
@marckohlbrugge
We built Upright to replace Pingdom at 37signals for monitoring all our services, and now we've open-sourced it too. Global checks, playwright smoke tests (with video recording!), detailed uptime tracking, and feeding into Prometheus + Grafana. Enjoy! https://t.co/QUVv0SyBuI
@dhh
We're all still fumbling in the dark with agents, but some patterns are emerging (and some disappear quickly again!), and it's our role as software makers to make use of it all along the way. Here are some quick notes from one of those internal sessions sorting it all at 37s. pic.twitter.com/EG0dnfpA9o
@dhh
Unlike Campfire, where we shared a zero-history copy of the codebase, Fizzy's public codebase has the entire life of the product development cycle out in the open. 1,792 pull requests of historical fun and insight into how we make things at 37signals! https://t.co/b0PrQBfJGC
@dhh