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+# AMP (Sourcegraph)
+
+#entity
+
+## Summary
+
+Agent product from Sourcegraph, where [[thorsten-ball]] is a founding engineer. The vault's **second reference [[harness]]** after [[claude-code]], and the one that pushes hardest on remote execution: its unit of work is the **orb**, a sleeping remote sandbox tied to one conversation. Officially self-described as "AMP Frontier Corporation."
+
+## Current Understanding
+
+**Operating principle:** don't optimize for what looks safe today, optimize for the ability to move fast tomorrow. They could have made money in 2025 building "a single agent in a VS Code sidebar with an enterprise permission system and per-line attribution" — and that model would have been obsolete within a year. Instead they publicly kill their own features on `ampcode.com/news` (the VS Code extension went first). Some users churn; the ones who stay respect the pushing. See [[shedding-weight]].
+
+**Shape of the product:**
+
+- Installed as a **PWA** from `ampcode.com` (Thorsten suspects the acronym itself blocks mass adoption of the install flow).
+- A **low / medium / high / ultra dial**, each level mapping to a model *and* a sub-agent choice. Default is medium.
+- Sub-agents: **Oracle** (reviewer, gives advice) and **Painter** (generates images). Meta-agent **Puck** controls other agents, spawns orbs, messages them, and runs flows.
+- Multi-model: GPT, Anthropic and GLM models all supported.
+- **Orbs**: one URL packages the thread + the agent + the computation + the diff; the sandbox sleeps when idle and wakes on typing; the same conversation streams to phone, laptop and TUI; share the URL and a teammate takes over. Agent-to-agent communication shipped recently. See [[async-by-default]].
+
+**What customers actually buy:** the most common question AMP gets is "guys, what's the meta? What model, what prompt?" — customers are paying for the research decisions as much as the software. That is a commercial restatement of [[harness|harness-over-model]].
+
+**Internal practice:** ~99% of AMP's own code is AI-written; a bug is screenshotted, sent to AMP, and returned as a fix from an orb for spot-check and merge; side-bugs get their own parallel orb, branch and checkout.
+
+## Evidence
+
+- Frontier bet, feature-killing, PWA install, model dial, Oracle/Painter/Puck, orbs, multiplayer, velocity anecdotes, live production ship — [[2026-07-28-agentic-engineering-10x-developer]].
+
+## Related Pages
+
+- Entities: [[thorsten-ball]]
+- Concepts: [[harness]], [[async-by-default]], [[shedding-weight]], [[build-for-the-agent-not-the-human]], [[code-as-throwaway]]
+- Related tools: [[claude-code]] (the vault's other reference harness; local-first where AMP is sandbox-first), [[hermes]] (skills-first, the axis AMP ignores)
+
+## Contradictions / Uncertainty
+
+- AMP ships sub-agents and a meta-agent but no user-authored skills layer — a harness design that assumes the *vendor* curates structure, where [[hermes]] and [[claude-code]] assume the *user* does. Whether that is a philosophy or a roadmap gap is unstated.
+- "15+ sandbox providers racing to zero margin" is Thorsten's own prediction about the infrastructure his product depends on; he calls it unsustainable without saying what AMP does about it.
+- All internal metrics are self-reported by a founding engineer. Status: tentative.
+
+## Next Questions
+
+- Does the orb model survive [[enterprise-ai-reality|enterprise compliance]] — code and conversation living in a vendor's remote sandbox is exactly what Sebastian's clients lock down?
+- Is "bring your own agent" ([[build-for-the-agent-not-the-human]]) compatible with selling an agent?