There is a quiet shift happening in software development. Linear wrote about it. @elvissun talks about it on X. Anyone paying attention can feel it.
The effort is moving upstream.
Writing code is getting cheap. Spinning up a feature, a prototype, an entire app - that is increasingly a matter of minutes, not weeks (p.s. there are still folks who don’t believe this - I can assure you that for some tasks, the difference is this stark). What is becoming scarce is not execution. It is specification. Context. The quality of the brief.
I started my career as a Business Analyst. Back then, the whole job was turning vague human intent into precise, buildable requirements. Everyone thought that role was dying, or at least getting absorbed into Product Management. Turns out it was just early.
We are all BAs now. The tools are getting out of the way. The thinking is what is left.
The Task and Context System we’re all going to be using soon
What if every task had a dedicated context file that lived alongside your notes (e.g. in Obsidian)? I say to my AI assistant: “Create a task to write an article about our setup.” One command. Two things happen automatically - a backlog item is created on my personal mission control board, and a markdown file appears in Obsidian with a unique reference (TASK-001).
The status field is a dropdown. Changing it from ‘idea’ to ‘ready’ triggers a heartbeat sync that moves the card on the board. Drag the card, the file updates. It’s a bi-directional update.
The context file is a permanent record. Once the task is done, it’s archived so I (or the AI) can go back and see the full story - what was asked, what was built, the PR link, retrospective feedback etc..
I Do Not Write Code Anymore. I Write Context.
When a task involves code, my AI spawns a coding agent in a git worktree. The agent explores the codebase, plans the implementation, commits to a feature branch, opens a PR. I review. I merge.
The quality of the output is directly proportional to the quality of the brief. A vague task gets vague code. A well-specced context file with examples and edge cases gets something mergeable.
This is the BA instinct, updated for 2026.
To end this thought, take a look at this - it’s my GitHub commit history… The end of February was when I bought a Mac Studio and set up Openclaw… I’ve been tweaking the set up and it’s constantly getting better and allowing me to produce higher quality output.
Now that I have this capability, I can’t see any way of going back…