About

About Fig

What is Fig?

Fig is a results-driven AI coding tool designed to build high quality software from little more than a set of goals. It can’t read your mind, but it is designed to ask you questions so that it can design and build tech that fulfills your vision.

In the hands of an engineer it’ll increase their capacity by a meaningful multiple; safely ≥3. In the hands of a founder with a clear vision, or a product manager worth their salt, they probably won’t need engineers.

What makes Fig different?

  • Free to use.
  • Nothing else offers a trifecta:
    • More autonomy
    • Higher quality code
    • Virtually same token cost as using Claude Code
  • Results-driven, rather than HITL. Doesn’t require a technical operator.
  • Runs on your own hardware, wherever you want.
  • Built by and for someone trying to get the most out of AI, not to make a buck off you.

Who is it for?

  1. Any software engineer with a token budget ready to become a one-person engineering department.
  2. Any founder contemplating hiring software engineers (they shouldn’t*).

Who’s behind it?

Abel McElroy. Twice tech founder and former FAANG engineer (🤮). I know you’ve never heard of me. How could anyone have? I turned down Google after working at Amazon to be a tech hermit.

I’ve made a career, or at least a lifestyle, out of going from idea to shippable code, mostly single-handedly, and Fig is that process automated. I wouldn’t blame you for being skeptical during one of the most hyped tech booms of our time (we probably wouldn’t get along if you weren’t). I don’t want you to just trust me either. I want you to see for yourself. The Principles are public, and Fig is free to try. Just try it.

Why does it exist?

I built Fig for myself, to replace myself. I love making things, but even early in my career it occurred to me that I had a very limited number of projects I would ever be able to make. Fewer than I wanted. AI presented a solution to that problem, but not with the tools I found on the market today.

The market standard HITL paradigm that virtually every tool is built for means two things I can’t abide:

  1. My productivity was still capped at human speeds.
  2. The loop sucked. I liked writing code, but I do not like babysitting.

Combined, these mean that I pay money, hate the process, get worse code, and barely get more done in a week... F%&# that 👎👎.

Frankly, AI isn’t doing its job if a human needs to be ‘in the loop’; HITL is the past playing dress-up as the future. We live in a present where AI is already writing all of our code, let’s embrace it.

How does it work?

Quality as a foundation. HITL is only standard because people can’t trust AI agents to write code autonomously. The hurdle is quality.

I’ve shared my insights on how to get coding agents to write better code: The Principles. If you read the engineering principles and workflows, you’ll have the gist of how Fig works.

What the orchestrator does that the skills cannot is a suite of quality-of-life features and reliability improvements over Claude Code. That includes automatic handoffs so your agents never approach compaction, and token and $ budget visibility. Plus, about 1000 other little things that, if they work right, you’ll never notice. All in an interface that beats a shell.

Once quality is trustworthy, you get autonomy, throughput, and thus cost savings.

What does it cost?

Free to use. You bring your own tokens. Any Anthropic account will do. (And if you ask nicely, I’ll add other providers.)

If you want the most out of Fig, then prepare to pay a small markup on the tokens you use in Fig for premium features (coming soon).

What’s the vision?

Deliver on the promise AI has been making about the end of software engineers. I don’t relish it, but it’s happening. There’s going to be a lot less demand for people with technical know-how, and results-driven tools like Fig are going to be the thing that heralds the next era after HITL proves to be a transitional blip.

People with visions of their own are going to use results-driven AI coding to build their tech, their companies, and more. Fig is betting on that future and actively making it happen.

How do I reach you?

Questions, ideas, concerns, suggestions: contact@fig4.ai.

Keep it civil. I’m going to read these.