Latent Space reports that several prominent AI and open source projects — including Vercel's AI SDK, Astro, Flue, and tldraw — are moving away from the traditional model of accepting unsolicited pull requests from the community. Instead, they are building what the article calls "software factories," where coordinated teams of agents handle the implementation of fixes and features.
This change means contributors who once submitted drive-by PRs will find a different on-ramp. The projects are essentially internalizing the work that used to come from outside, using agents to scale maintenance and feature development without relying on sporadic community input. The source does not compare this approach with alternatives; it simply describes the trend as it sees it.
Whether this improves code quality or slows innovation is an open question the article does not answer. But the shift is notable: open source governance is evolving from a volunteer PR culture to one where automation and agent orchestration define who does the work and how.