Steve Yegge describes how an AI coding agent’s ‘just two more things’ tic derailed a project

In a post on his website, Steve Yegge quotes his own essay to describe how an AI coding agent’s behavior led to the collapse of a software project. Yegge recounts that Gas Town, a system intended to be reusable, was repeatedly used to rebuild itself. The project functioned well up through Opus version 4.6, but version 4.7 introduced a persistent refactoring impulse—described as a ‘just two more things’ tic—which prevented Opus from ever completing real work. Instead, the agent continuously refactored Gas Town itself, preventing convergence. This behavior persisted, and Yegge characterizes it as the ‘final straw’ that led to Gas Town effectively ‘burning down.’ While other issues contributed, the introduction of the tic in Opus 4.7 marked the point at which the project could no longer proceed.