Surf
Surf is a platform for running coding agents inside real development environments.
Instead of dropping an agent into a repo with a shell and hoping it can figure things out, Surf lets teams define the environment around the code: runtimes, services, credentials, startup order, readiness checks, and the workflow an agent should follow before work is considered done.
The goal is straightforward: make agents better at working in existing production codebases.
What Surf does
- Spins up reproducible environments for each repo
- Starts the services an agent needs, like databases, APIs, dev servers, and workers
- Injects the right environment variables and credentials
- Waits until dependencies are actually ready before the agent begins
- Lets teams define their own processes for how agents perform tasks
- Carries forward team knowledge such as conventions, architecture notes, and internal guidance
Why it exists
Most coding agents are strongest in small demos and weakest in the environments that matter most: large repos, multiple services, non-trivial setup, and team-specific engineering process.
Surf is meant to close that gap. It gives agents a better starting point and gives teams a way to encode how work should happen in their codebase.
Prior Art
Leading engineering teams have already built narrower, internal versions of this idea for themselves. Surf is aimed at turning that pattern into something configurable and reusable.
- Why We Built Our Background Agent (Ramp)
- Minions: Stripe’s one-shot, end-to-end coding agents
- Minions Part 2 (Stripe)
More Info
More coming soon…