Toggle Software aims to Automate the Construction Process With Toggle OS
A toggle is a small piece of rod-shaped metal that’s pushed through a loop or hole on clothing to fasten it. The word’s also used to describe a type of switch that has two outcomes, like turning the caps lock on and off on a keyboard. In software, toggles are the equivalent of the on/off switches in options menus.
Toggle aims to use its software and hardware to help automate the construction process. Its flagship product, Toggle OS, turns construction drawings into robot manufacturing programs for rebar, the steel that holds concrete together in a building’s frame.
The company’s technology works with heavy material handling equipment and industrial robots to increase safety, productivity and precision in the rebar assembly process. Toggle has a 40-person team and has raised a Series A of $11.5 million from investors including GV, Y Combinator and Sway Ventures. TechCrunch reports the company is raising a Series B with an unspecified amount of funding.
Managing toggle configuration via hardcoding becomes cumbersome at a certain scale. It’s usually a good idea to move it into some sort of centralized store, often an existing application DB. Ideally this is accompanied by the build-out of some form of admin UI which allows system operators, testers and product managers to view and modify Feature Flags and their toggle configuration.
When it comes to Experiment Toggles and other runtime re-configurations it’s important to be able to quickly override a toggle without having to re-deploy a whole production instance. The alternative can be a painful process which delays testing cycles and hampers the all-important feedback loop that CI/CD offers.