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Felix Tay ·

I almost didn’t want to send this.

About three weeks ago I stopped writing my updates and this changes now.

I had things to share, but I was fighting a battle in the trenches.

About 2 months back, I started noticing something weird about NLC.

The majority of users were fine. But a small subset reported repeated bugs.

Every new feature I added felt like taking 20 steps forward and 19 steps back.

I started working with my agents to figure out why.

The answer was simple: the codebase had grown too large for the agents to handle.

When I started, I was a "vibe coder" - zero engineering background.

I let the platform grow organically:

  • Many features were added in isolation

  • We have redundant codes

  • Split feature owner issue

  • Duplicates here and there

AI makes generating code incredibly fast. But that speed can mask a structural danger.

And if you don't pay attention, the complexity will come back and bite you.

NLC is "fine." But "fine" is not enough.

I want an agent operating system that can create the output of an entire corporation, run by one person.

And to make that transition from good to great, I have to take a pause on development, and focus on stabilizing everything. 

So six weeks ago, I paused development and started a stabilization project.

But every layer I uncovered forced me to learn more about actual software engineering.

When I finally hit the bottom-most layer, I realized that ‘stabilization’ is not really what I wanted

There is an entire league of difference between a weekend side project over a production-grade system, and you can’t build a skyscraper on a foundation that was designed for a single-story home.

35 hours ago, after days of scoping conversations and double-checking every assumption, I gave my lead agent the greenlight.

I abandoned the six-week stabilization project entirely.

We aren't updating NLC anymore. 

We are building NLC 2.

It was a painful pivot and it cost me six weeks of work.

But it is the only way to achieve the scale I want.

My journey so far has taught me that the transition from prompt-writer to agentic engineer is brutal.

But the direction is worth it.

I am going back to monitor the build.

FELIX


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