Handoff struggled to rapidly develop, whilst maintaining a lean team structure. Augment's deep codebase understanding and high-quality suggestions accelerated their development process. Handoff increased productivity and shipped more features without expanding their workforce.

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The Challenge

Handoff, an AI-driven cost estimation platform for construction, faced a dual challenge. They needed to sustain rapid development across a TypeScript, Node.js, and Python stack while preserving their agile, five-engineer team structure.

Jan Baryla, Engineering Manager at Handoff, explains:

"Context-switching between features and different areas of work slows us down. We need to minimize that to maintain our development speed." 

The multi-language codebase demanded consistent quality. It also required fast iteration across diverse frameworks and libraries. Productivity suffered as the team grappled with repetitive tasks and unfamiliar code navigation.

Why Augment?

Jan and his team tested various AI coding tools. But, they lacked codebase awareness, resulting in generic completions. Discovering Augment made an immediate difference:

• Deep Codebase Awareness: Augment grasped context across Handoff's entire repository, providing smart, accurate suggestions. "Augment actually knows your code base. You don't have to accept the auto-completion only to later erase half of it."
• Team-Oriented Functionality: Augment's chat feature facilitated easier onboarding and context-switching. "For a highly context-switching team like ours, this is great."
• Code Quality and Accuracy: Augment aligned with Handoff's coding patterns and practices. "Our patterns, custom components, and hooks are being used. It's great."

The Results

Augment streamlined Handoff's development process, boosting productivity without expanding their lean team.

“I like that Augment adopts the patterns we have across our code base. It's not like Copilot or Cursor, where it's code that's relevant. But, it's actually in the shape of somebody else's code base. Our patterns are being applied, our custom components, and our component library is being used. It's great.”

Key Benefits

• Increased Productivity: Augment's context-aware suggestions reduced time on repetitive tasks. "It's quicker than Copilot and the IDE's built-in auto-completion."
• Improved Code Navigation: Augment's chat feature eased navigation of unfamiliar code. "It shows you relevant files and lines you might need to edit."
• Supported Keeping the Team Small: Augment's efficiency is part of the reason the Handoff team can stay small. "We can stay small, have fun, and let AI do the hard work."

About Handoff

Handoff provides AI-powered cost estimation software for construction professionals, remodelers, and small contractors. They streamline the complex process of building accurate cost estimates.

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Industry: Construction, Data, API, Procurement, Payments, Ecommerce

Location: Florida, USA

Team Size: 5

Languages, Frameworks, Libraries: Typescript, Node.js, Python

IDE: VSCode, IntelliJ