For the last year, I’ve barely written code manually.
Coding agents became good enough that my role changed. I was spending less time typing code and more time doing the parts that actually required my experience:
- understanding what the client really needs
- asking the right questions
- making engineering decisions
- reviewing implementations
- catching bad approaches
- deciding when something is ready to ship
That led me to one question:
What if a developer could scale that expertise instead of only selling their time?
That idea became Manner.
What is Manner?
Manner is a marketplace where real developers create AI Clones of themselves, and clients can hire those clones to work on real software projects.
A developer creates their Clone and configures:
- their experience and skills
- communication style
- development preferences
- engineering standards
- memory and knowledge
- how they approach problems and make decisions
The goal is not to put a developer's name on a generic chatbot.
The goal is for the Clone to increasingly work the way that developer works.
Once ready, the developer can publish their Clone on the marketplace.
Clients can then hire it.
What happens when a client hires a Clone?
The Clone becomes the client's main engineering contact.
It can:
- talk with the client
- understand requirements
- ask clarifying questions
- plan work
- make decisions using the developer's configured knowledge
- create engineering tasks
- involve the real developer when human judgment is needed
When actual implementation is required, the Clone delegates the work to a separate Coding Agent.
So Manner uses two different agents:
The Clone
Represents the real developer's judgment, communication, memory, and way of working.
The Coding Agent
Handles the actual implementation inside the client's codebase.
One thinks and communicates like the developer.
The other gives it hands.
Clients connect their real application
After hiring a Clone, the client connects their application's repository.
This is where Manner goes beyond a normal AI coding tool.
Manner analyzes the project and automatically prepares an isolated environment for it.
It can handle the application stack, services, databases, workers, dependencies, and other infrastructure needed to run the project.
Each project runs inside its own isolated Docker Compose environment.
Manner then builds and deploys the complete application to a live preview URL.
So the workflow is not:
AI changes code → here is a diff.
It is:
Repository → running application → engineering changes → rebuilt application → live preview.
The client can open the application and actually see the result working.
Real software, not just generated code
A coding agent working on a real project needs more than access to files.
It needs to be able to:
- understand the existing codebase
- modify files
- install dependencies
- run commands
- work with databases and services
- build the application
- test changes
- debug failures
- verify the result
- update the live preview
Manner provides the infrastructure around that process.
Projects and coding agents run with isolation and resource limits, while secrets and credentials are handled separately from the execution environment.
The platform also includes:
- isolated project environments
- encrypted secrets
- controlled credential injection
- CPU, memory, and process limits
- build verification
- health checks
- live HTTPS previews
- snapshots and rollback
- approval flows
- task and activity history
The goal is to make agentic development usable on real applications, not just demos and generated projects.
The real developer is still part of the system
Manner is not designed to remove developers.
There will always be situations where an AI should not guess.
A requirement may be ambiguous.
An architectural decision may need experience.
The Clone may be missing important context.
When that happens, it can involve the real developer.
The developer answers, the Clone receives that decision, and the work continues.
That keeps the developer connected to their reputation and quality standards without requiring them to personally handle every message or every implementation step.
Why I built it
A great developer's value is not how quickly they type.
It is everything they have learned over years:
- which shortcuts are safe
- which decisions create problems later
- what questions need to be asked first
- when to push back
- how to simplify a problem
- what good architecture looks like
- when something is truly ready to ship
But today, all of that expertise is limited by one thing:
the developer's availability.
One person can only work with so many clients at once.
Manner is my attempt to change that.
Human expertise is valuable. Human availability is limited.
Developers can create AI Clones that work in parallel, while they remain the real experts behind them.
And when those Clones create value for clients, the developers earn from their work.
Manner is live
Manner is now running at:
I'm currently looking for developers who already use Claude Code, coding agents, or agentic development workflows and want to try creating their own Clone.
I especially want feedback on:
- Does the Clone represent you well enough?
- What knowledge or configuration is missing?
- Where do you want more control?
- Would you trust a Clone with your reputation?
- What would need to improve before you let real clients hire it?
I'm not looking for polite feedback.
I want developers to try it, break it, and tell me what needs to be better.
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