{"id":4758,"date":"2025-07-08T08:43:35","date_gmt":"2025-07-08T12:43:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/outofthebox.software\/?p=4758"},"modified":"2025-07-09T14:13:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T18:13:12","slug":"ootb-and-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outofthebox.software\/index.php\/2025\/07\/08\/ootb-and-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"OOTB and AI"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A question that frequently comes up is <em>does Out of the Box Software<\/em> <em>use AI in development?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TL;DR: not for code.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At&nbsp;<strong>Out of the Box Software<\/strong>, we write our code the old-fashioned way: with focus, care, and human expertise. No large language models (LLMs), no shortcuts, no copilot on autopilot. Just seasoned developers solving real problems, with clean, robust, and maintainable code.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But don\u2019t get us wrong: we\u2019re not anti-AI. Quite the opposite. We\u00a0<em>do<\/em>\u00a0use language models where they make sense: for exploring ideas, improving communication, or automating repetitive documentation. Even the initial draft for this post was produced by an LLM. We just draw the line at letting them\u00a0<em>write<\/em>\u00a0the code that runs your business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because software deserves&nbsp;<em>thought<\/em>. And context. And nuance. And the ability to say &#8220;no&#8221; to the first idea that pops up in autocomplete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">LLMs Are Tools, Not Teammates<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>We&#8217;re firm believers that LLMs are valuable tools; just not developers. When you&#8217;re building something mission-critical or long-lived, you don\u2019t want to discover that your app is built on spaghetti generated by a stochastic parrot. You want clean architecture, clarity, and accountability. And that only comes from human judgment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What do we use LLMs for?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Parsing<\/strong>. LLMs are great for transforming human input into structured data that can be used by software. Think R2-D2, who could understand human, but then plug into a data port.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Data analysis<\/strong>. For data mining and analysis, many companies today employ machine learning and we&#8217;re no exception. ML can find trends out of seemingly unrelated data, and that can be very helpful in driving automation.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Data generation<\/strong>. We have some in-house development tools that can generate test data and starting points for image assets, which are then modified to exactly fit the needs of the software.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>We&nbsp;<em>don\u2019t<\/em>&nbsp;use LLMs to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Write production code<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Decide how anything should be structured<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Replace peer review<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Generate boilerplate that nobody understands<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Code That Thinks, Because We Thought First<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>At Out of the Box, we believe your software should be&nbsp;<em>understood<\/em>&nbsp;by the people who build and maintain it. That\u2019s why we write everything ourselves; thoughtfully, deliberately, and with careful planning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You won&#8217;t find us copy-pasting from an anonymous AI output window. Instead, you\u2019ll see hand-crafted pull requests, meaningful commits, and conversations that respect the complexity of your problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">AI-Smart, Not AI-Driven<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>We\u2019re not Luddites. We don\u2019t fear AI. We use it as a support system, not a crutch. And that\u2019s the balance we think modern software development needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you\u2019re looking for a team that knows how to think with the tools of the future, but still writes software with accountability and care, you\u2019re in the right place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Out of the Box Software<\/strong>: <em>Built by humans. For humans. With just the right touch of machine.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>OOTB does not use AI to write code. We use some LLMs and ML tools for parsing, data analysis and test data generation.&hellip;<a href=\"https:\/\/outofthebox.software\/index.php\/2025\/07\/08\/ootb-and-ai\/\" class=\"more-link\"><span class=\"more-button\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">OOTB and AI<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4760,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[8,9,14,15,10,12,13,11],"class_list":["post-4758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faq","tag-ai","tag-artificial","tag-copilot","tag-cursor","tag-intelligence","tag-llm","tag-lm","tag-machine-learning"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/outofthebox.software\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/box_robot.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outofthebox.software\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outofthebox.software\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outofthebox.software\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outofthebox.software\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outofthebox.software\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4758"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/outofthebox.software\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4780,"href":"https:\/\/outofthebox.software\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4758\/revisions\/4780"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outofthebox.software\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outofthebox.software\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outofthebox.software\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outofthebox.software\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}