Operating a Company as Code

What if a company could run entirely as code? Every business decision, document, and system change committed, versioned, and auditable.

The Premise

Most companies claim to be “digital-first.” Few are built as digital systems.

Core Question

Can every business decision, document, and system change be committed, versioned, and auditable just like software?

This isn’t a slogan. It’s an architectural approach. Modern enterprises, especially those in regulated industries, can be built with the same reproducibility, traceability, and security found in production-grade infrastructure.

Who’s Already Doing This

Coinbase keeps their security controls, application code, and internal policies in GitHub Enterprise as ‘company-as-code’ for transparency. Salto has applied similar ideas to SaaS configuration management.

What sets the Company-as-Code approach apart is how it brings compliance, governance, and automation together in a single, versioned framework.

How This Works

Running a company as code dissolves traditional boundaries between technical and organizational work.

Traditional Approach

Decisions made in meetings, recorded in slides
Compliance handled by external auditors
Knowledge trapped in teams
Scaling through hiring

Company-as-Code Approach

Decisions made in commits, recorded in Git history
Compliance embedded in IaC modules and tests
Knowledge published as Markdown, reusable as code
Scaling through automation and reproducible workflows

This philosophy isn’t about replacing people - it’s about empowering them with a shared source of truth: a living codebase that reflects the organization itself.

The Three Pillars

1 Security & Compliance Rigor - Enterprise-grade controls built into the foundation

2 Infrastructure Automation - Reproducible, testable, version-controlled systems

3 AI-Assisted Engineering - Practical tools built into real workflows

Design Principle

Changes are versioned, traceable, and auditable by design.

Research Questions

Can compliance frameworks be expressed as Infrastructure as Code?

Tools like HashiCorp Sentinel and Chef InSpec demonstrate this is possible. They encode compliance controls as automated tests, providing consistency and clear audit trails for standards like ISO 27001, SOC 2, and HIPAA.

Can security governance be automated through pipelines?

Policy-as-code frameworks enable organizations to enforce security policies automatically in infrastructure pipelines, moving beyond document-based approaches.

What would it mean for AI systems to assist with audits?

Safely, verifiably, and explainably. Automated evidence collection, risk identification, and controls testing can significantly reduce manual effort while maintaining auditability.

The Vision

Imagine an organization where infrastructure enforces compliance by default.

✓ Cloud infrastructure automatically checked against ISO 27001 controls

✓ Documentation updates trigger compliance validation pipelines

✓ AI agents monitor drift and assist in audit preparation

✓ Every improvement traced back to the exact commit

StudioAsCode is actively developing these approaches - repositories maturing, documentation evolving, frameworks stabilizing.

If a company can be run as code, the proof should be in versioned commits, not presentations.

The Path Forward

Companies can be versioned. Automated. Improved. Just like engineering projects.

Each versioned commit, configuration file, and iteration brings the concept closer to practical reality.

Bottom Line

Company as Code isn't just a philosophy - it's an architectural approach under active validation.