proletariat

The AI Engineering
Ladder.

Orchestrate AI agents in parallel.
Spawn workers on demand, each in their own environment.

Boulder New Tech • February 2026 • Chris McDermut
TL A1 A2 A3 A4 A5

What is "Work"?

Work is the transformation of inputs
into valuable outputs through constrained steps.
In software engineering, work is:

Understand requirements → Write code → Test → Review → Ship
Requirements Write Code Test Review Ship

Flow & Constraints

Flow is the movement of work through a system.
A constraint is a resource or capacity limitation at any step in the flow.
The throughput of any system maxes out at its tightest constraint.
Inspired by The Goal (Goldratt) and The Phoenix Project (Kim)

Compounding Autonomy

Level 0 No AI "I don't use AI tools"
Level 1 Reference "I ask AI questions like a search engine"
Level 2 Copy-Paste "I chat with AI and paste code into my editor"
Level 3 Agent "AI edits my files directly"
Level 4 Parallelization "Multiple AI agents on different tasks"
Level 5 Directed Autonomy "I direct and review. Agents execute."
Level 6 Proactive Autonomy "Agents pick up and review their own work"
Most teams are at Level 1–3. Proletariat enables Level 4–6.
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 autonomy/output →

Proletariat

npm install -g @proletariat/cli

An open-source orchestration platform for AI agents: The loop that agents run on.

➀ Human or agent creates work
➁ Agents spin up in isolated environments
VM + Docker + file isolation
➂ AI agent does work, reviews, delivers
➃ Human or agent reviews and approves
HUMAN or agent Tickets Agent x N PRs Review merge

Demo

Let's Connect

Early Access QR Code
Get early access to the
Agent Orchestration Dashboard
Install CLI QR Code
Download the CLI now
npm i -g @proletariat/cli
Chris McDermut • linkedin.com/in/christopher-mcdermut • github.com/chrismcdermut
proletariat.ai