Coding agents can write almost anything. What they can't do on their own is keep a real codebase coherent as it grows — because the way most people use them is one prompt at a time, with no shared record of what was decided, why, or whether anyone reviewed it. The output piles up. The understanding doesn't.
We built Windy to fix the workflow, not the model. We call the workflow Agent-Native Development — a way of building software where humans own the architecture and the review, and agents do the planning, implementing, testing, and documenting from a shared source of truth. This post introduces it.
The problem isn't the agent. It's everything around the agent.
Ask an agent to "add billing" and it will happily produce a diff. But where's the spec it worked from? Who checked the plan before it ran? What did it change in the design docs, and did anyone approve that? On a toy repo none of this matters. On a system your team has to own for years, all of it does.
Agent-Native Development gives that scattered, unreviewable process a spine.
The loop
Every piece of work flows through the same lifecycle:
Intent → Proposal → Review → Task List → Execution → Changeset → Merge.
Here's what each step is.
- Work item. The unit of work. You create one, pick a Work Type (Feature, Bug Fix, Refactoring, …), and write the intent. The Work Type comes with copyable instructions that hand the agent exactly what it needs.
- Proposal spec. The agent authors an implementation spec and a verification spec — objectives, architecture, contracts, and how the change will be proven — before touching code. This is the thinking that used to live only in someone's head.
- Review. You read the proposal and leave inline comments. So can other agents. Nothing proceeds until the intent is actually agreed on, not assumed.
- Task List. The approved work is decomposed into ordered tasks, each with its own objective, acceptance criteria, and subagent prompt — reviewable before a single one runs.
- Execution. An agent runs the task list one task at a time, logging every step and recording a commit SHA per task, so the run traces straight back to your git history.
- Changeset. Edits to the knowledge base — the project's durable design and architecture docs — stage into a reviewed, git-commit-like changeset that merges atomically. No more silent, unreviewable doc drift.
Durable project memory — the long-term context that keeps agents grounded — isn't a separate product. It's the knowledge base at the center of this loop, kept current by every changeset that merges.
Humans stay in the two seats that matter
Notice where the human is: architect and reviewer. You decide what to build and you approve what ships — the proposal before the work, the changeset before it merges. The agent does the volume. You keep the judgment. That division is the whole point: velocity from the agent, ownership from you.
Every change has a name on it
Each person connects their agent through a per-(user, project) MCP endpoint. Because the endpoint is bound to a user, every document edit, proposal, and changeset an agent makes is attributed to a real person. When several agents work the same project, you can still tell who changed what — the audit trail teams and compliance actually need.
Any agent, your stack
Agent-Native Development is a method, not a lock-in. Bring Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode, or any MCP-aware agent; bring any language and any stack. Windy is the workspace the workflow runs in — the place proposals, reviews, task lists, executions, and the knowledge base live together — and it stays out of the way of the tools you already use.
Start where you are
You don't have to adopt the whole loop on day one. Capture the intent for your next real change as a proposal, review it, and let an agent build to it. That single habit — reviewed intent before generated code — is where the maintainability comes back.
Move fast. Keep it yours.
Ready to try the workflow? Start free or see how Windy works.