This feels awkwardly premature and dubious. I think "we're adding features to support better context modelling and execution with LLMs" would have sufficed.
I've thought of Linear as a careful, measured, thoughtful company in the past so this seems out of the blue, like there's some kind of existential crisis occurring over there.
Linear is actually growing faster than it has in years (across revenue, new users, and engagement). But how people are using it has changed. They’re leaning much more heavily into agentic workflows. Ignoring that shift would be the real mistake, so we’re leaning into it.
I'm glad to hear Linear's doing well. It's still my favourite tool for the job.
I should have phrased my comment better. The post conveyed a sort of undue urgency to me that I found uncharacteristic and off-putting. I don't think Linear is actually having an existential crisis.
It's going to vary from person to person a lot. The people using more agentic workflows will think "finally, this will be great". People like me who don't have the AI kool-aid IV'd directly into their veins might be a bit more skeptical. Exaggerating for effect, here. I use AI plenty, but I want it to stay far away from my issue tracker. To me that's a sacred space that can't be polluted by LLM noise. I'm sure a lot of people will categorize me as a crusty boomer for that.
What would you do instead? The value of your core product has plummeted over night, you have to support a valuation above $1B, and your assets are good penetration into current generation companies and good reputation as a tastemaker saas
At ZAR once we had pervasive ingestion into an organization-wide knowledge graph in place and working well, the next step was to ditch Linear and replace it with a homegrown experiment tracking system that focuses all product engineers on empirical data and scientific method applied to how we prioritize work.
It's the only way to actually encourage high-agency, high-ownership behavior. Working from a backlog is actively counterproductive!
Code Intelligence. Linear can understand, answer questions about, and debug your codebase.
Code Diffs. Review code within a fast, modern interface built for both humans and agents to iterate together.
Linear Coding Agent. Linear writes code and automatically fixes bugs. Powered by frontier models, enhanced with native Linear context and tools
So another wrapper around Claude/OpenAI but with issue tracking integrated.
Agents are not mind readers. They become useful through context. Customer feedback, internal ideas, strategic direction, decisions, and code all need to be captured in a system that humans and agents can work from together.
Customer feedback can come from anywhere, phone calls, website forms, sales people, customer meetings, online discussions, Twitter, etc. How do you capture all of that in Linear? Doesn't make sense.
Internal ideas and strategic direction are usually discussed on Slack/Teams/meetings. Not on Linear.
Decisions can indeed be tracked on Linear, as an issue.
I think a true AI agent would simply sidestep tools like Linear. Tools like Linear won't be needed.
I think a true AI agent will simply be another employee. It gets added to Slack channels. It joins Zoom meetings. It gets access to company files. It gets access to feedback forms. It scours the internet for feedback on the company.
We're well aware that feedback comes from anywhere. The Linear agent also exists in other tools (Slack, Gong, Intercom, Zendesk, etc.) and we'll continue to add more channels to support collecting and managing feedback where it's coming from.
Claude Cowork is great when you want to collaborate with AI and third-party tools via MCP, but it's not a multi-user collaboration tool built for organizations. Our customers need to collaborate on software products and AI is only one part of the equation. Our customers need a system of record (long-term history, priority, and cross-team visibility of a project) and contextual collaboration (e.g. a customer success team member reporting a feature request or bug, a person on the product team deciding it's worth building/fixing). Claude Code is excellent for individual developer velocity (we use it a ton), but Linear’s agent is integrated into the workflow where the planning actually happens and is multi-player by design.
> but Linear’s agent is integrated into the workflow where the planning actually happens and is multi-player by design.
I wish you succeed and become multi-trillion dollar company but this is dying a slow death. I work on multiple projects as a contractor and number of things these days that are "multiple-player" are slowly approaching a zero...
This feels awkwardly premature and dubious. I think "we're adding features to support better context modelling and execution with LLMs" would have sufficed.
I've thought of Linear as a careful, measured, thoughtful company in the past so this seems out of the blue, like there's some kind of existential crisis occurring over there.
Linear is actually growing faster than it has in years (across revenue, new users, and engagement). But how people are using it has changed. They’re leaning much more heavily into agentic workflows. Ignoring that shift would be the real mistake, so we’re leaning into it.
I'm glad to hear Linear's doing well. It's still my favourite tool for the job.
I should have phrased my comment better. The post conveyed a sort of undue urgency to me that I found uncharacteristic and off-putting. I don't think Linear is actually having an existential crisis.
It's going to vary from person to person a lot. The people using more agentic workflows will think "finally, this will be great". People like me who don't have the AI kool-aid IV'd directly into their veins might be a bit more skeptical. Exaggerating for effect, here. I use AI plenty, but I want it to stay far away from my issue tracker. To me that's a sacred space that can't be polluted by LLM noise. I'm sure a lot of people will categorize me as a crusty boomer for that.
What would you do instead? The value of your core product has plummeted over night, you have to support a valuation above $1B, and your assets are good penetration into current generation companies and good reputation as a tastemaker saas
At ZAR once we had pervasive ingestion into an organization-wide knowledge graph in place and working well, the next step was to ditch Linear and replace it with a homegrown experiment tracking system that focuses all product engineers on empirical data and scientific method applied to how we prioritize work.
It's the only way to actually encourage high-agency, high-ownership behavior. Working from a backlog is actively counterproductive!
This industry is becoming so boring.
made my day
Yikes. I guess writing your own eulogy isn't just a Stanford MBA exercise anymore.
Show HN: justanissuetracker.com
Internal ideas and strategic direction are usually discussed on Slack/Teams/meetings. Not on Linear.
Decisions can indeed be tracked on Linear, as an issue.
I think a true AI agent would simply sidestep tools like Linear. Tools like Linear won't be needed.
I think a true AI agent will simply be another employee. It gets added to Slack channels. It joins Zoom meetings. It gets access to company files. It gets access to feedback forms. It scours the internet for feedback on the company.
We're well aware that feedback comes from anywhere. The Linear agent also exists in other tools (Slack, Gong, Intercom, Zendesk, etc.) and we'll continue to add more channels to support collecting and managing feedback where it's coming from.
https://linear.app/changelog/2025-10-23-linear-agent-for-sla... https://linear.app/changelog/2025-12-11-linear-agent-for-int...
Why not use Claude Cowork? It already can connect to any tool via MCP and do all these things (and Claude Code to, well, code tasks)
Claude Cowork is great when you want to collaborate with AI and third-party tools via MCP, but it's not a multi-user collaboration tool built for organizations. Our customers need to collaborate on software products and AI is only one part of the equation. Our customers need a system of record (long-term history, priority, and cross-team visibility of a project) and contextual collaboration (e.g. a customer success team member reporting a feature request or bug, a person on the product team deciding it's worth building/fixing). Claude Code is excellent for individual developer velocity (we use it a ton), but Linear’s agent is integrated into the workflow where the planning actually happens and is multi-player by design.
> but Linear’s agent is integrated into the workflow where the planning actually happens and is multi-player by design.
I wish you succeed and become multi-trillion dollar company but this is dying a slow death. I work on multiple projects as a contractor and number of things these days that are "multiple-player" are slowly approaching a zero...
Heard in every Fortune 500 board room right now