Overview
HumanLayer is an AI IDE, collaboration platform, and set of building blocks for software teams working with coding agents. It groups agent sessions and code artifacts into collaborative workspaces and guides agents through a structured Research/Plan/Implement workflow with human checkpoints, real-time commenting on design docs before implementation, and multi-model support across Claude, Codex, and Copilot. It also offers local and cloud agent orchestration so teams can ship faster without letting AI degrade code quality.
Company
HumanLayer went through Y Combinator's F24 batch. It was founded by Dexter Horthy, who spent seven years as an engineer, PM, and executive at Replicated, a Series C dev-tools company. The company started as a human-in-the-loop API and SDK for AI systems, then coined the term "context engineering" in 2025 and popularized a state-of-the-art Research/Plan/Implement workflow for coding agents, positioning itself at the center of the agentic software-development wave.