danshapiro.com

The framework post that defined how the industry talks about AI coding maturity. Shapiro, CEO of Glowforge, published this in January 2026. Within weeks, Justin McCarthy cited it as validation and context for StrongDM’s public announcement of their factory.

Key Observations

“90% of developers who say they are AI native are operating at level two.”

“Almost everybody tops out at level three because they struggle with the psychological difficulty of letting go.”

“Level 5 exists. It’s running in production.”

The Five Levels

See the full framework breakdown.

The critical insight: the gap between Level 3 and Level 5 isn’t technical. It’s organizational and psychological. The tools for Level 5 exist. Most teams can’t bring themselves to use them.

A Second Post

Shapiro followed up with a post specifically about StrongDM: “You Don’t Write the Code. You Don’t Read the Code Either.” — where he quotes Justin McCarthy on initially doubting that Jay Taylor could build faithful replicas of GSuite, Salesforce, and Okta. Available at danshapiro.com.