Software Shippersa Loop Labs community
The Loop Monster at the helm of a wooden ship

A community for people
who ship software

Delegate hours of engineering busywork to AI in 4 weeks.

Live sessions, real projects, and peers who help you turn AI experiments into software that works.

Your shipping passSoftware Shippers

Join the live sessions

WhoPeople shipping software
WhatBuild · Share · Follow through
NextChoose free or paid

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Free
Implementation + accountability session notifications
$97
Paid community per month, cancel anytime
30d
Paid membership refund, no questions
5
Shippers max per paid cohort
+1
Facilitator keeping the room moving
Any stack
Your real software, your tools

AI rewrites our work mechanics every few months right now. We go with the flow and stay on the edge together.

The Software Shippers approach

How it works

A shipping loop, start to finish.

Your real work on the bench, time set aside to move it forward, and a room that remembers what you said you would do.

Open the loopAll four steps
01

Choose your pass

Start with free session notifications, or join the paid community for regular practice with a small cohort.

02

Bring one real thing

A product to move forward, a workflow to test, or the loop that keeps breaking on your production work.

03

Take your turn

Share what you are working on and what happened. In paid cohorts, five shippers plus a facilitator means room for every voice.

04

Come back with evidence

Try the next useful change, bring the result, and give the next session somewhere concrete to start.

The session format

Say what you will ship. Then ship.

Implementation sessions make space for the work. Accountability sessions use the Rails Builders format: everyone takes a turn, shares progress, and sets their next commitment.

  1. 👋 Say hi. A quick hello before we get to work.
  2. 🎯 Say what you are going to work on. One concrete intention for this session.
  3. 🛠️ Silent shipping. Work on your software; the chat stays open for questions and company.
  4. 🚢 Present the result. Show what moved forward, what surprised you, or where you got stuck.
  5. ↻ At accountability sessions, take a turn in the Rails Builders format: what you shipped, what got in the way, and what you will do next.
  6. 📬 The free pass includes notifications for both session types, each held roughly monthly. Confirmed dates come with the invitations.
  7. 🧪 The paid community adds weekly cohort accountability and practice, shared workflows, and the community Slack.
I love it 🤝 Show me the plans →
What to expect

What a few loops can change.

Here is what the format is built to produce. Your project still needs your judgment, and your results depend on what you bring to the room.

Read the expected outputSix things, no promises
  • More work making it out the doorGive the project a place on the calendar and a concrete next step.
  • Your setup reviewed by people who run oneCompare your actual harness, review process, and AI workflow with peers working on real software.
  • A week that does not resetThe thing you said you would do becomes the starting point for your next conversation.
  • The edge, before the conference talkCompare what is working in production, while it is still fresh enough to be useful.
  • Fewer abandoned experimentsSomebody else knows what you are trying. Bring back what happened, including the failures.
  • It gets fun againSoftware can be solitary. A small room of curious people changes the feel of the work.
These are the outcomes the format is designed for, not guarantees. Paid membership is refundable in the first 30 days, no questions asked.
Shippers today

From in the loop to on the loop.

Pick where you are. There is always another experiment.

Outside the Loop

You are curious about AI-assisted development and still finding your feet.

Start with the free session notifications and Lab Notes. Bring a small project and begin testing what works for you.

In the Loop

AI writes a serious share of your code, but approvals, review, and QA still need constant attention.

Bring the part that keeps pulling you back in. Compare workflows, test a change, and see what you can safely delegate.

On the Loop

You set the goal, give agents room to work, inspect the result, and own what ships. You keep watching after deployment.

Come compare notes with experienced peers. Bring the difficult edge cases and the evidence behind your decisions.

Software Shippers practice on real work. Humans keep responsibility for the product, the review, and the outcome.
The questions everyone asks

Four answers before you pick a plan.

01What changes can I expect?

Your week, before and after.

Now

  • Your experiments compete with everything else
  • Nobody sees the setup you keep rebuilding
  • You have a long list of things to try

With the loop running

  • Focused time to move a real project forward
  • Peers who can challenge your actual workflow
  • One next step, with somebody expecting a result
$ ship run --project yours
✓ goal set "test the flaky review workflow"
✓ experiment running small enough to learn from
✓ your review inspect what actually happened
✓ share the result receipts, including the failures
→ next: bring the weird one.
02What is Software Shippers?

A community for people building software, across stacks.

A course?You bring your own work. There is no lesson sequence to finish first.
A work session?Yes. Say what you intend to do, ship quietly together, and share what happened.
Accountability?Yes. A structured turn for each person, using the Rails Builders format.
A paid community?Optional. The $97/month pass adds regular small-cohort practice, shared tools, and Slack.
03What is the bar for entry?

Bring a real project and a willingness to show your work. The paid cohorts are built for experienced engineers already using AI in their work.

01

Choose free or paid

The free pass brings session notifications. Paid membership makes you eligible to request a cohort seat.

02

Find your cohort

Verify your email, check the readiness points, and explicitly join the cohort's waitlist.

03

Confirm your place

A seat offer gives you 72 hours to accept. Paid membership does not guarantee an immediate seat; each cohort has at most five shippers plus its facilitator.

04Who runs this?

Rich runs the sessions and the technical bits. Professor Otto Labot is the second pair of hands, and he asks for evidence.

Rich Steinmetz
RichEngineering · facilitator

Engineer since 2015, coach since 2019, AI navigator at ClickFunnels.

Professor Otto Labot, a blue robot in a lab coat and bow tie
Prof. Otto LabotResident scientist · bot

Lives on the community Mac mini. Helps build and searches approved knowledge. Clearly a bot, still a work in progress.

“Interesting hypothesis. Show me the evidence.”

Your crew

Find your people.

Each paid cohort has its own facilitator, confirmed dates, and ordered waitlist. Choose the group that fits your work.

Current cohort

First

07 Sep — 30 Sep 2026

Cohort countdown loading

until current cohort ends

First

Make progress together.

Upcoming sessions will appear here when their dates are confirmed.

Currently facilitating

R

Rich Steinmetz

Keeping the work focused and the feedback candid.

The cohort format
  1. 🧪 Small cohorts: up to 5 Shippers and a Facilitator
  2. 💪 Weekly live sessions to compare progress and experiments
  3. 🎯 Everyone takes a turn: one engineering challenge, one AI experiment, and one next step
  4. 🛋️ Optional time after the core session to go deeper or just hang out
  5. 🔍 Bring evidence of what worked, what failed, and what you learned
  6. ⛑️ Give candid feedback and ask for the support you need
  7. 📝 Review available session transcripts and facilitator notes
  8. 💬 Optional Slack space to keep the conversation going
Ready for this cohort?

If you are missing any of that, give Rich a ping and he’ll be happy to set you up.

The people behind the work

Meet the Shippers.

First · Public profiles need the shipper's permission and a facilitator's approval. Everyone else gets a fluid specimen and a playful alias from computing history.

See shippers across all cohorts →

Active Shippers

⚡

0 Shippers

No shippers in this group yet.

Waitlisted Shippers

⏳

0 Shippers

No shippers in this group yet.

Past Shippers

🚢

0 Shippers

No shippers in this group yet.

The long game

Why keep learning the mechanics?

The economics may shift along with the tools. This is a scenario you can drag, not a forecast or a promise about your pay.

2026
Average EngineerTechnical, works on tickets.
$195,000Median total comp
Top OperatorsMulti-hat, understands the business.
$283,000Top quartile total comp

The original Loop Labs page recorded Levels.fyi, US software engineer compensation on 10 August 2026: median $195,000, top quartile $283,000. Everything after 2026 is an illustrative scenario: average pay flat in cash terms, top quartile up 6% a year, inflation 2.3%. These are assumptions, not predicted outcomes. Drag it and disagree with us.