GABRIEL FERRAZ AND ALEC ERASMUS
A view into the roadmap of Armitage, the future we want to see, and our beliefs on what the path foward looks like.
🌌 The Big Picture
We're on a thrilling journey to revolutionize the way we measure and reward the magic behind engineering - all part of our grand plan to reshape the future of work. With tech frontiers like open source, DAOs, AI and web3, we're gearing up to redefine teamwork and meaningful collaborations across the globe.
The conversation around measuring impact is buzzing louder than ever, thanks to pioneers like Gitcoin, RetroPGF and Open Source Observer. Their groundbreaking work fuels our inspiration and sets the stage for the monumental shift we're eager to bring into the world.
Yet, for this tech to truly take the world by storm and find its place in everyone's daily grind, it's got to be as accessible as ordering your favorite latte. We're talking mainstream adoption, reaching beyond the tech savants to empower organizations everywhere with the tools they need to thrive.
The timing has never been better to embark on this venture. The narrative of measuring impact is gaining renewed momentum:
And with the accessibility of AI at an all-time high, people and organizations are more open than ever to trying out new AI tools that could enhance their efficiency. This is the arena where Armitage will shine, ensuring that we can programmatically measure and reward engineering impact across all types of workflows and organizations, fostering an environment of innovation and productivity.
🛠️ What Sets Armitage Apart
Enter Armitage: our vision is to make impact metrics a no-brainer for everyone, from solo developers to giant corporations, while upholding the spirit of innovation that's driving public goods forward. We're talking about making these metrics as easy to use as your favorite app, with zero hassle and zero config.
At Armitage, we believe that the key to reaching all types of organizations and truly penetrating the software engineering industry is through the development of a for-profit product. This approach allows us to leverage capital to reach both startups and enterprises alike. While we are committed to operating as a for-profit organization, we also remain dedicated to providing free access to our product for open-source projects and communities. This is a core principle of our product and is crucial for its validation and widespread use across all spectrums of the engineering workflow.
Unlike others who've wandered off track trying to do it all, Armitage is laser-focused on what we do best: quantifying engineering impact, particularly through code contributions. This singular focus is our secret sauce, enabling us to deliver unmatched value and make our tools incredibly easy to dive into. We're not aiming to become a protocol or a research venture. Instead, we're dedicated to making the process of measuring engineering impact as simple and efficient as possible, without unnecessary bells and whistles. The primary goal of Armitage is not to dazzle with complex features but to provide a user-friendly product that breaks down barriers, making it easy for anyone to start measuring engineering impact right away.
We believe that the failure of other collaboration tools to reach a wider audience in the past is due to their attempt to measure too many types of collaboration impact. This approach often results in the user needing to invest significant upfront resources to extract value from the tool, making it akin to project management software like JIRA, cluttered with unnecessary artifacts. At Armitage, we aim to steer clear of this approach. Our goal is to enable our customers to extract value from our tool as soon as they start using it. We achieve this by integrating data they already have and providing insights they actually need. Furthermore, we offer tools to act upon this data with optional reward features, ensuring a streamlined and efficient user experience.
🌐 A Glimpse Into the Future
We have a profound appreciation for Sourcecred, and this is why it was our starting point. Sourcecred is an algorithm already used by various live organizations and open source communities. It has proven to work remarkably well for the majority of use cases, thus providing a solid foundation for our work. Although Sourcecred is incredible, we found it extremely hard to onboard even very senior engineers to it due to its complexity and very technical setup, making it near impossible to use if you are not a very technical person, or even an engineering manager without a couple days to read how it works and setup an instance.
Our aim is to reignite the Sourcecred community and expand upon it, particularly through the application of AI. While we are dedicated to incorporating other types of contribution calculations in the future, our immediate focus is on enhancing Sourcecred. Our ambition is to make it adaptable to different types of organizations. As our first major project, we plan to modernize Sourcecred to Typescript. This will enable us to tap into the algorithm more easily, with the primary goal of adding AI-made contribution quality validation to the node weights. This is one of our main objectives for our first fundraising round.
While we are thrilled by the myriad of new ventures using AI to enhance the developer experience and boost productivity, we notice a gap in the landscape. Few are exploring the other side of the coin: utilizing AI to evaluate the quality of an engineer's contributions and the relevance of their code in relation to the overall project goals. We believe that understanding how a contribution impacts other engineers and the project as a whole is a critical piece of the puzzle, and this is where Armitage comes into play.
For the tech-savvy and organizations already deep in the weeds of complex system research, we're not leaving you behind. Although our principles and thesis guide us to 0 config and 0 manual intervention, Armitage will offer customizable options for our algorithms and AI models, ensuring flexibility for any scenario. But hey, no pressure to tweak anything if you're cruising along just fine with our out-of-the-box solutions.
The possibilities that Armitage data can create, especially in reward workflows, are genuinely exciting to us. We understand that large corporations and organizations typically have existing reward systems such as promotions and bonuses. However, these often lack objectivity, being influenced by office politics and social capital, and are frequently riddled with inefficient processes and excessive middle management. Moreover, the incentives in these reward systems often do not align with the actual impact generated by the collaborators within these organizations.
However, open source communities and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) may find immense value in these features. The introduction of novel reward use cases can incentivize further contributions and pave the way for what we envision as Collaborative SaaS in the future. The ability to quantify an engineer's impact on a project is a significant value unlocker. It has the potential to shape the future of work, making it more collaborative, transparent, and rewarding. With Armitage, we're not just tracking contributions; we're enabling communities to appreciate and reward them in transformative ways.
One compelling use case of Armitage data is the potential to reward contributors with tokens in the form of airdrops from the organizations and teams they contribute to. Let's take the StarkNet airdrop as an example. StarkNet, an Ethereum project, airdropped tokens to all the contributors and engineers who participated in an Ethereum related GitHub repo. Each participant received the same quantity of tokens. However, with Armitage data, this process could have been more nuanced and reflective of individual contributions. StarkNet could have leveraged Armitage data to distribute varying quantities of tokens based on each engineer's impact on the Ethereum ecosystem. This would have allowed for a more equitable distribution, rewarding contributors proportionately for their efforts and impact, truly embodying the spirit of collaboration and shared ownership in the open-source community.
Another use case of Armitage data that we're particularly excited about is the potential to create a payment gateway specifically designed for open source communities and DAOs. This would enable these communities to sell products or services using a token system created and distributed among its contributors. This payment gateway would effectively "burn" tokens equivalent to a certain USD value that would be available in a DEX pool. The intrinsic reward for contributors participating in the project comes as the token supply decreases whenever a user purchases their product. This user would also need to acquire tokens from a pool, which in turn increases demand. Essentially, this is token engineering in action! This is just one example of the transformative potential of Armitage data, and why we're so thrilled about its possibilities.
Another use case that excites us is the potential to generate EAS private attestations or certifications using zero-knowledge proofs based on an engineer's contribution scores to a specific private project. This innovative approach allows an engineer to showcase their prowess, demonstrating to employers or society at large that they are a 'rockstar' on a particular project or a top collaborator. Importantly, this can be achieved without exposing any Intellectual Property or code from the project, safeguarding the sensitive details while still enabling the recognition of talent. This holds transformative potential for how we recognize and reward engineering excellence in the future.
While we are incredibly excited about these upcoming features and use cases, we want to stress that our primary focus remains on our core approach. When these features are released, they will be optional. We understand the current enthusiasm surrounding web3, but we want to be clear that we will only embrace this technology when it makes absolute sense for our product, not simply because it's the current "hype" or "trend". We see immense potential in the intersection of AI and the web3 world, but our goal is to use these tools sensibly and only when they are the best fit for the job. Optionality is a key concept and principle for us.
Commitment to open source? Absolutely. Armitage is, and will always be, an open book, inviting engineers to not just use our platform but to contribute, experiment, and apply their research to real-world challenges across various industries.
At Armitage, we believe in leading by example. We are committed to using Armitage itself to measure and incentivize our own collaborations, a process often referred to as "dogfooding". By doing this, we are not only able to evaluate our own contributions but also get firsthand experience of our features. This gives us a unique perspective on what works best, both for us and for our customers, allowing us to continuously refine and improve our tools.
✨ The Bottom Line
Armitage isn't just building tools; we're building bridges to a future where work is more meaningful, collaborative, and rewarding. We're inviting you to join us on this exciting journey. Together, let's redefine the impact of engineering work and make it count for more.
Stay tuned, the future is bright, and with Armitage, it's just around the corner. 🌟
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