The source code was the moat. But not anymore – Vallified

AI coding agents like Claude Code and GitHub Copilot CLI have fundamentally changed the competitive landscape for open-source projects. The author discovered that these tools not only accelerated their own development on rqlite (a distributed database), clearing years of backlog in days, but also eliminated the traditional moat that existing codebases once provided. Previously, the accumulated investment in a mature, working system created a barrier to competition—starting from scratch was too costly. Now, AI tools have dramatically lowered the cost of building new systems from the ground up, making pre-existing code less of a competitive advantage. While this enables faster feature development for existing projects, it also means competitors can close the gap much more quickly than before.