January 13, 2026
Neckbeards vs Hypebeasts: Truce?
Why we built our own background agent
Ramp’s DIY code bot shocks skeptics and sparks 'build-your-own or vanish' debate
TLDR: Ramp built Inspect, a background code bot that writes and verifies code, now responsible for about 30% of merged changes. Comments range from ex‑skeptics calling it “scarily good” to debates on whether others can copy the setup, fueling a build‑your‑own vs buy debate that could shape how teams ship software.
Ramp just dropped a home‑cooked coding sidekick called Inspect that doesn’t just write code—it checks its own work, runs tests, ships pull requests, and even takes voice notes so you can literally fix bugs from your couch. It spins up instant cloud sandboxes on Modal, plugs into GitHub and Sentry, and lets you launch unlimited sessions while your laptop naps. The stat everyone’s gawking at: ~30% of Ramp’s merged pull requests now come from Inspect. Cue the comment section fireworks. The loudest flex: hardened skeptics are melting. One self‑described “old neckbeard” admits it’s “scarily good,” bragging about “1‑shot” features. Meanwhile, hype‑fatigued folks begrudgingly whisper, “Okay, this one might change everything.” The hottest drama? A split between the “DIY or die” crowd and the “you can’t just copy Ramp’s secret sauce” camp. sdwr pokes: can any dev rebuild this from the write‑up? Others cheer the open spec like a recipe card for AI‑powered shipping. And in the weeds, architecture nerds spin up a lively thread over queues vs websockets, because of course they do. Meme of the day: “Go home and let Inspect cook” becomes the new engineer bedtime routine—bot clocks in while you clock out. The mood is bright, buzzy, and a little terrified—in the fun way.
Key Points
- •Ramp built Inspect, a background coding agent that writes and verifies code for backend and frontend tasks with full context and tooling.
- •Each session runs in a sandboxed VM on Modal, pre-provisioned with tools like Vite, Postgres, and Temporal, and integrates with services such as Sentry, Datadog, LaunchDarkly, Braintrust, GitHub, Slack, and Buildkite.
- •Inspect supports multiple interfaces—Slack, Chrome extension, web UI, pull requests, and a web-based VS Code—and sessions are multiplayer with voice support.
- •Sessions start quickly, are inexpensive to run, support unlimited concurrency, and offload local machine involvement; setup occurs before session start to minimize delays.
- •Ramp reports ~30% of merged pull requests in frontend and backend repos are written by Inspect, and provides a spec to help others replicate the system.