PIRXEY / Mission Brief
✦ ✦ ✦A Pirxey field briefing for product managers

10× isn't a constant.
It's a function of project size.

AI assistance compounds beautifully on small, greenfield work — and decays predictably as codebases mature, processes thicken, and humans must coordinate. Below is the model we use to set realistic expectations with you, before a single line of code is written.

9.2×
boost at step 1
4.4×
boost at step 10
0.9×
boost at step 30
Open the cockpit
◢◣ Cockpit · interactive

Drag the slider. See the measured decay.

Same model. Same engineer. Different codebase. Watch the boost decay — and see which forces drag it down. The X-factor is not a marketing number — it is AI efficiency × Human factor, and both terms shrink as complexity grows.

Medium50–250k LOC · 4–8 devs
5.4×
realized productivity boost
74%
AI efficiency
model output usefulness
×
74%
Human factor
coord., review, integration
=
54%
Final efficiency
of theoretical 10×
Tune the model
Set once — slider applies them as a geometric sequence
%
%
AI = 97% × ... = result
HF = 95% × ... = result
Measured, not modeledPulled from 53 production codebases we built or co-built between 2024 and 2026 — greenfield MVPs, scale-ups, and legacy rescues. Same toolchain, same prompts, different terrain.
Boost = shipped value, not tokensWe track reviewed, merged, deployed work — not lines generated. Code that gets thrown away, rewritten, or rolled back does not count as boost.
Why the curve bendsBelow ~30k LOC, AI compounds the engineer. Above ~150k LOC, structural forces start pulling against it: duplicated logic, context rot, and review load.
Typical scope at this size
B2B SaaS product, fintech dashboard, e-commerce platform
Model developed by Łukasz Graliński
Boost curve
Final productivity multiplier × project size
scale: 0 → 10×
MicroSmallMediumLargeEnterprise
No assumptions. We measured the boost across 53 products we shipped over the last two years — from solo prototypes to multi-team platforms. Drag the slider and see what actually happens to AI leverage as a codebase grows up. See the results for yourself.
◢◣ Why · the six forces

What's actually shrinking the boost?

Six measurable forces — each backed by 2025–2026 research. Together they explain the curve you just dragged through.

◢◣ Evidence · receipts

The numbers — straight from the source.

We didn't make this curve up. Every percentage in our model maps to public, peer-reviewed or industry-scale research. Click through and read.

✦ ✦ ✦ Mission control standing by

Want to know your project's real X-factor before we start?

We'll size your codebase, score your team's review/integration capacity, and give you a Pirxey number for your specific mission. Free, no slide deck.

Schedule a discovery callsales@pirxey.com
Pirxey · Aleja Grunwaldzka 472, 80-309 Gdańsk, Poland·130+ engineers · 100+ missions delivered