AI coding has made CI a bottleneck, so we reworked ours to keep up

Linear has announced a significant overhaul of its Continuous Integration (CI) infrastructure to address the performance challenges introduced by the rise of AI-assisted coding. As developers increasingly use AI tools to generate more code, the volume of pull requests and the frequency of commits have surged, leading to significant bottlenecks in traditional CI pipelines. Linear’s engineering team identified that their existing setup could not scale with this increased throughput, resulting in slower feedback loops and reduced developer productivity. To solve this, they redesigned their CI architecture to prioritize speed and efficiency, implementing optimizations that allow for faster build times and more reliable testing cycles. By modernizing their infrastructure, Linear aims to ensure that their development velocity remains high despite the increased load. This update highlights a growing trend where software teams must adapt their internal tooling to accommodate the rapid pace of AI-driven development.