Balance independence with sync. Too much disturbance kills focus; too little causes drift.
Tools
GitHub Issues and Projects — Single source of truth. Decisions, tasks, prioritization in GitHub Projects. Transparent, no digging through chat.
Slack — Lightweight coordination. Long updates belong in GitHub. Huddles for real-time discussion.
Devin — AI software engineer with dedicated Slack channel. Treated like a colleague, transparent workflow.
GitHub as CMS — IDEs double as blog editors. Write something? Submit a PR.
Dev tools — Zed, GitButler, Cursor, Claude Code.
Escalation
- Phone — Truly urgent, can't wait
- Slack mention — Reasonably urgent, can wait hours
- GitHub — Everything else, async
AI-Augmented
Small, mission-aligned team augmented with AI can outperform companies with hundreds of people.