Year in Review: Lessons From 12 Projects Patreon Shipped in 2025

Patreon engineers made massive bets in 2025, shipping code across all areas of the system and enabling impactful features like Autopilot's growth tools suite. Expanding Autopilot's scope, reach, and effectiveness was a challenge, especially guaranteeing recipient redemption after email delivery in a distributed worker system. Designing explicit metrics for projects is crucial to avoid moving in the wrong direction, as seen in Autopilot's tradeoffs between channel burn, raw conversions, and revenue.