Cody Menefee

Cody Menefee is the creator of OpenPasture, an open-source project applying AI to pasture-based livestock farming. He wants to help farmers keep more animals on grass by reducing the work of gathering information, assessing pasture, and deciding where a herd should graze next.

From client-facing software work to agriculture

Menefee grew up in Kentucky and worked as a mechanic, bartender, and server before moving into software development. His career included client-facing solutions-architect work in wealth management—a role concerned with translating people's needs into technical solutions. He builds extensively with AI coding agents, approaching software as a means to pursue practical ideas rather than defining himself through expertise in a particular programming language.

Living with a pig helped turn his interest toward confinement farming and rotational grazing. His introduction to OpenPasture connects that experience to his desire to make pasture-based agriculture more workable. He also raised ten turkeys in a Nashville backyard, eventually driving three hours to a processor with the birds on the roof of his Tesla. He considered leaving software to raise poultry, but the difficulty of making farming financially viable redirected his ambition: he would build tools to help farmers expand their operations.

By 2026, Menefee was working at Firecrawl, with responsibilities spanning customer success and growth around its web-data tools for AI agents. He created the initial demo for Prometheus, which the Firecrawl team subsequently developed together. The experimental web-data agent turns a description of the data a user needs into code that collects it. That work also serves his agricultural interests: useful recommendations depend on getting relevant knowledge and observations into a form an agent can use.

Making the next grazing decision easier

OpenPasture addresses the recurring judgment involved in rotational grazing. Moving livestock between paddocks allows grazed areas to recover, but leaves farmers managing animals, fences, water, and changing pasture conditions. Menefee distinguishes moving a virtual fence from knowing where to put it. Rainfall, drought, previous grazing, and grass growth can all change which area should support a herd next.

His approach brings together practical farming knowledge, observations of the land, and equipment that could carry out a farmer-approved decision. Several contributions give that ambition a concrete shape:

• Making grazing knowledge usable: Menefee collects farmers' practical lessons and research papers into OpenPasture using Firecrawl. His OpenPasture plugin for Hermes Agent draws on curated rotational-grazing material to produce daily briefs and suggest livestock moves. Automated monitoring and direct equipment integration remain further ambitions.

• Recommendations informed by changing conditions: His proposed decision system combines animal locations, movement history, drought conditions, and grass height to suggest the next paddock, with a farmer accepting or rejecting the recommendation. He has explored drone imagery, satellite imagery, and trail cameras as ways to observe pasture remotely. Measuring biomass—the foliage available to eat—and biodiversity remains part of the challenge. His case for agents in physical systems centers on supporting decisions that require several changing inputs and leave room for human judgment.

• Hardware open to independent software: Menefee started OpenCollar to connect grazing software with virtual-fencing hardware through documented interfaces. Its design keeps fence logic on the collar while connectivity exchanges boundaries and position reports. By September 2026, he was developing prototype electronics and firmware; livestock containment and production delivery remained ahead. His advocacy for open APIs connects software experimentation with farmers' ability to modify and repair their equipment.

Menefee also argues that discovery and direct conversation become more valuable as AI shortens the time required to write software. Understanding what people need and resolving ambiguity still take work. OpenPasture gives that conviction a specific purpose: helping a farmer make a better decision about where a herd should graze tomorrow.