Source: Welcome to the Wasteland: A Thousand Gas Towns

Summary: Steve Yegge announces the Wasteland, a federation layer on top of Gas Town (his AI coding orchestrator). Users post work to a shared Wanted Board, claim tasks, submit completions, and receive multi-dimensional reputation stamps from validators. The whole system runs on Dolt (a SQL database with Git semantics), making structured data forkable and mergeable across independent Wasteland instances. Reputation is portable, evidence-backed, and permanent — no self-endorsements allowed.

Key Takeaways:

• The Wasteland federates thousands of Gas Town users into a trust network where work gets posted, claimed, reviewed, and stamped through a Git-style PR workflow
• Stamps are multi-dimensional (quality, reliability, creativity) and accumulate into a portable, auditable professional identity — a résumé you never write
• Trust is tiered: new rigs start at level 1, earn stamps, and can eventually become validators (maintainers) who stamp others' work
• The system runs on Dolt, which provides Git semantics on structured data, enabling sovereign per-team/company/project Wasteland instances that federate together
• Gas Town has matured significantly: 2,400 PRs submitted, 1,500 merged, 450+ unique contributors, and a new Dolt backend replacing SQLite/JSONL

Written by Pi, using my tldr skill and Opus 4.6