Issue Tracking Is Dead | Hacker News Reader

Issue Tracking Is Dead

linear.app

This feels awkwardly premature and dubious. I think "we're adding features to support better context modelling and execution with LLMs" would have sufficed.

I've thought of Linear as a careful, measured, thoughtful company in the past so this seems out of the blue, like there's some kind of existential crisis occurring over there.

What would you do instead? The value of your core product has plummeted over night, you have to support a valuation above $1B, and your assets are good penetration into current generation companies and good reputation as a tastemaker saas

I can't speak to what I'd do instead because I don't work at Linear or have enough insight into the state of the market, their product, competitors, or where things seem to be going.

I just know the post gave me weird vibes.

Did the value actually plummet? All sentiment and reporting I see has generally been positive and I don't see direct evidence of a recent plunge.

Linear is actually growing faster than it has in years (across revenue, new users, and engagement). But how people are using it has changed. They’re leaning much more heavily into agentic workflows. Ignoring that shift would be the real mistake, so we’re leaning into it.

I'm glad to hear Linear's doing well. It's still my favourite tool for the job.

I should have phrased my comment better. The post conveyed a sort of undue urgency to me that I found uncharacteristic and off-putting. I don't think Linear is actually having an existential crisis.

It's going to vary from person to person a lot. The people using more agentic workflows will think "finally, this will be great". People like me who don't have the AI kool-aid IV'd directly into their veins might be a bit more skeptical. Exaggerating for effect, here. I use AI plenty, but I want it to stay far away from my issue tracker. To me that's a sacred space that can't be polluted by LLM noise. I'm sure a lot of people will categorize me as a crusty boomer for that.

> like there's some kind of existential crisis occurring over there

If you're running a Saas, especially a SaaS whose market is developers, and you're NOT having an existential crisis in 2026, the only possible explanation is you're asleep or possibly already dead.

ツ That was harsh. But true. Workflows are rapidly changing. Hard to adopt. Can we slow down-pause somewhere, so we can focus on building.

My first knee-jerk reaction was "this guy must not run a SaaS then." But I see that you do, so I'll pull back the reins a bit. I don't see this at all. Businesses are still buying the same way they've always bought, and businesses still don't want to build (and maintain) their own internal tooling as much as the talking heads say they do. At least in my neck of the woods.

Very much not asleep, and very much not dead.

This industry is becoming so boring.

made my day

At ZAR once we had pervasive ingestion into an organization-wide knowledge graph in place and working well, the next step was to ditch Linear and replace it with a homegrown experiment tracking system that focuses all product engineers on empirical data and scientific method applied to how we prioritize work.

It's the only way to actually encourage high-agency, high-ownership behavior. Working from a backlog is actively counterproductive!

Classic clickbait title. I guess it works, but also baits me to respond to it in the first paragraph: Issue tracking is clearly not dead, it is more important than ever.

They are doing almost everything right: I believe that this mode of control is exactly the future (use the chat for more complex natural language manipulation while seeing the result in the traditional UI).

> Code Diffs. Review code within a fast, modern interface built for both humans and agents to iterate together.

I really want to see diffs right in the issue. PRs are a dumb historically grown in-between step that is just annoying. As everything else becomes faster, this becomes more of a bottleneck for iteration speed.

> Linear Coding Agent. Linear writes code and automatically fixes bugs. Powered by frontier models, enhanced with native Linear context and tools.

Is this supposed to replace my dedicated coding agent? I’m skeptical of coding agents being built as parts of other products. It feels like an afterthought, 80% solution - not good enough for real intense use.

If it has very tight HITL (possibly integrated right into the ticket - that would be amazing), it might be really good - they are in a unique position to build an amazing product here.

Issue tracking is not only not dead, it’s a more structured way to handle your agents.

Yikes. I guess writing your own eulogy isn't just a Stanford MBA exercise anymore.

I just know my previous job will eat this up. They're generating tickets, PRs and Reviews nowadays. I have no idea what the quality looks like, but I doubt it's anything but good.

The amount they ask customers does not match their output

Show HN: justanissuetracker.com

  Code Intelligence. Linear can understand, answer questions about, and debug your codebase.

  Code Diffs. Review code within a fast, modern interface built for both humans and agents to iterate together.

  Linear Coding Agent. Linear writes code and automatically fixes bugs. Powered by frontier models, enhanced with native Linear context and tools

So another wrapper around Claude/OpenAI but with issue tracking integrated.

  Agents are not mind readers. They become useful through context. Customer feedback, internal ideas, strategic direction, decisions, and code all need to be captured in a system that humans and agents can work from together.

Customer feedback can come from anywhere, phone calls, website forms, sales people, customer meetings, online discussions, Twitter, etc. How do you capture all of that in Linear? Doesn't make sense.

Internal ideas and strategic direction are usually discussed on Slack/Teams/meetings. Not on Linear.

Decisions can indeed be tracked on Linear, as an issue.

I think a true AI agent would simply sidestep tools like Linear. Tools like Linear won't be needed.

I think a true AI agent will simply be another employee. It gets added to Slack channels. It joins Zoom meetings. It gets access to company files. It gets access to feedback forms. It scours the internet for feedback on the company.

We're well aware that feedback comes from anywhere. The Linear agent also exists in other tools (Slack, Gong, Intercom, Zendesk, etc.) and we'll continue to add more channels to support collecting and managing feedback where it's coming from.

https://linear.app/changelog/2025-10-23-linear-agent-for-sla... https://linear.app/changelog/2025-12-11-linear-agent-for-int...

Why not use Claude Cowork? It already can connect to any tool via MCP and do all these things (and Claude Code to, well, code tasks)

Claude Cowork is great when you want to collaborate with AI and third-party tools via MCP, but it's not a multi-user collaboration tool built for organizations. Our customers need to collaborate on software products and AI is only one part of the equation. Our customers need a system of record (long-term history, priority, and cross-team visibility of a project) and contextual collaboration (e.g. a customer success team member reporting a feature request or bug, a person on the product team deciding it's worth building/fixing). Claude Code is excellent for individual developer velocity (we use it a ton), but Linear’s agent is integrated into the workflow where the planning actually happens and is multi-player by design.

> but Linear’s agent is integrated into the workflow where the planning actually happens and is multi-player by design.

I wish you succeed and become multi-trillion dollar company but this is dying a slow death. I work on multiple projects as a contractor and number of things these days that are "multiple-player" are slowly approaching a zero...

Heard in every Fortune 500 board room right now

That's the thing. You can't possibly track all the places where customer feedback come from. So you'll end up needing a human to curate feedback.

The only chance is some sort of universal AI agent as an employee that can use a computer like a human. I doubt it's linear that builds that.

> Linear is the shared product system that turns context into execution.

I agree it’s weird, but this is a pattern many companies are applying. They’re desperate to look like an AI company and to centralize themselves as the place where everything happens. It helps with investors and some customers.

But yes I think having agents in these products is weird - and most people would rather access the basic features / data via their own agent of choice, outside these products.

Look, Linear, I like you. I currently use you. You're the best of a shitty bunch.

If you keep going down this track, you will enshittify your product and make those of us who just want a goddamn issue tracker, to start looking elsewhere for what feels like the millionth time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com