This article ended waaaay too abruptly. Reverse Centaurs and Canonization would seem to be orthogonal dynamics, and there was synthesis to be had between them.

Centaur + no Canonization -> personal infrastructure, MVPs. probably ever-accruing tech debt, but the scale is limited so it probably doesn't matter

Centaur + Canonization -> libre software, companies with empowered employees. The Canonization process is going to have some differences now that the goal now includes consumption by an LLM.

Reverse Centaur + no Canonization -> Ever accruing tech debt, eventually leading to a situation where nobody understands how the "magic box" works and everyone is powerless to fix it when it breaks down (tech debt accrues to a level where an LLM can no longer achieve the desired results)

Reverse Centaur + Canonization -> It's certainly possible to have an automated process that distills and compresses knowledge at one stage into a succinct representation that can be used down the line. The open question is whether a company could arrive at this with disempowered reverse centaurs, or whether they're doomed to the previous option

Enumerating those 4 quadrants, I don't think I'm even doing a good job capturing where I had thought the article was going to go. But I'm having a hard time getting it back now.