Scaling DevTools podcast

Conversations with the people building DevTools.

Interviews with the founders and marketers building great developer tools.

Listen wherever you get podcasts

Episode 199

Sep 3, 202610:58

Siddhartha Borah from Brackett: teaching agents work that was never written down (Heavybit DevGuild)

In this episode, Siddhartha Borah, cofounder and CTO of Brackett AI, joins us at Heavybit DevGuild. Siddhartha explains how Brackett is building agents that can learn complex business work — especially in areas like supply chain and operations, where the real context often lives in people’s heads rather than documentation. We talk about teaching agents by doing the work, turning messy human knowledge into reliable workflows, agent-in-the-loop systems, memory, knowledge graphs, and why the last mile of enterprise automation is so hard.

Links:
• Siddhartha Borah’s LinkedIn
• Brackett AI
• Heavybit DevGuild

00:00 Intro
00:30 What Brackett AI is building
01:40 Learning work that was never written down
03:30 Turning human context into repeatable workflows
05:20 Why real-world agents fail without hidden context
08:00 Teaching agents by doing the work
09:50 Handling edge cases and human handoff
11:30 Memory, knowledge graphs, and “déjà vu” for agents
14:00 Where to learn more

Episode 198

Aug 27, 202611:43

James Arthur from ElectricSQL - agents are data, not compute (Heavybit DevGuild)

In this episode, James Arthur, cofounder and CEO of ElectricSQL, joins us at Heavybit DevGuild. James explains why Electric has evolved from Postgres sync into data infrastructure for collaborative multi-agent systems. We talk about Durable Streams, Electric Agents, why agents should be modeled as long-lived data rather than compute, and why the future of agent infrastructure may look more like sync than sandboxes.

Links:
• James Arthur’s LinkedIn
• James Arthur on X
• Electric
• Electric blog
• Heavybit DevGuild

Episode 197

Aug 20, 202612:36

Dave Fletcher from LeadDev: what engineering leaders want from AI

In this episode, Dave Fletcher, cofounder of LeadDev, joins us at LDX3 London.

Dave shares what LeadDev is seeing from thousands of engineering leaders, including what tools they are buying, how AI coding tools are changing downstream needs, and why observability, CI/CD, testing, reliability, and security are rising up the priority list.

We also talk about how DevTools companies should message AI without triggering engineers’ bullshit detectors, why specificity beats hype, and why in-person events are becoming more important as digital channels get crowded.

Links:

Episode 196

Aug 17, 202618:29

Dennis Pilarinos from Unblocked: context for AI coding agents

In this episode, Dennis Pilarinos, founder and CEO of Unblocked, joins us at LeadDev in London.

Dennis explains why AI coding agents are only as good as the context they can access, and why every new agent is like a developer on their first day at a company.

We talk about organizational context, token savings, MCP, stale documentation, knowledge graphs, permissions, identity across systems, and why the next big infrastructure layer for AI development may be the context layer.

Links

Episode 195

Aug 6, 202610:53

Ian Coe from Tonic.ai: synthetic data, AI training, and enterprise fine-tuning

In this episode, Ian Coe, Co-founder and CEO of Tonic.ai, joins us at Heavybit DevGuild.

Ian explains how Tonic started by helping developers create safe, realistic data for testing and development, and how that has expanded into AI model training, de-identification, and synthetic datasets for reinforcement learning.

We discuss structured vs. unstructured data, healthcare and financial services use cases, Tonic Fabricate, Tonic Textual, fine-tuning, RL environments, and why enterprises are becoming more interested in training models on their own data.

Links

Episode 194

Jul 28, 202615:55

AI agents need cheaper sandboxes | Alex Jung from Unikraft (Heavybit DevGuild)

In this episode, Alex Jung, cofounder and CPO of Unikraft, joins us at Heavybit DevGuild. Alex explains how Unikraft went from an academic unikernel project to a cloud platform for running highly efficient workloads. We talk about why unikernels can make applications faster, cheaper, and more secure, how AI agents are driving demand for sandboxed compute, and why the next wave of software generation may require a much more efficient cloud infrastructure layer.

Links:
• Alex Jung’s LinkedIn
• Alex Jung on X
• Unikraft
• Unikraft on GitHub
• Unikraft open source project

Episode 193

Jul 10, 202648:04

Kim Maida on the DevRel Flywheel, AI, and Measuring What Matters

In this episode, Kim Maida joins the podcast to talk about DevRel, AI, developer experience, and measuring what actually matters. We also dive into her developer empowerment flywheel and how Keycard is approaching identity and access for AI agents.

Links:
• Kim Maida
• Keycard
• Kim Maida on LinkedIn
• Kim Maida on X

Episode 192

Jun 24, 202646:12

Robby Russell on Oh My Zsh, Developer Experience, and Open Source

In this episode, Robby Russell joins to talk about how Oh My Zsh went from a tool for a few coworkers to one of the most popular open source developer tools in the world. They cover developer experience, open source maintenance, AI-assisted pull requests, and how AI could reshape software consulting.

Links:
• Robby Russell
• Oh My Zsh
• Maintainable podcast
• Ruby on Rails Podcast
• Planet Argon

Episode 191

Jun 16, 202653:49

Swyx and Louis Knight-Webb @ AI Engineer Europe: DevTools, code mode, and the future of AI engineering

In this episode, Swyx, founder of AI Engineer, joins us live from AI Engineer Europe in London, alongside Louis Knight-Webb. We cover how AI Engineer grew from a single San Francisco conference into a global community, why industry AI work needs better venues for sharing, and what is changing in AI DevTools, code execution, research, PLG, enterprise sales, and human-written content in the age of AI.

Links:
• Swyx's LinkedIn
• Swyx on X
• Louis Knight-Webb's LinkedIn
• Louis Knight-Webb on X
• AI Engineer
• AI Engineer Europe
• AI Engineer YouTube
• AI Engineer on X

Episode 190

Jun 10, 202641:16

Acquiring a startup: what to do AFTER the deal closes - with Dan Moore from FusionAuth

In this episode, Dan Moore from FusionAuth breaks down how the company integrated Permify after the acquisition. We talk about customer communication, pricing and packaging, migration planning, internal enablement, and the practical work that turns an acquisition into a successful product integration.

Links:
• FusionAuth
• Permify
• Dan Moore on Bluesky

Episode 189

May 28, 202644:35

Joel Griffith from browserless: from GitHub issue to bootstrapped business

In this episode, Joel Griffith, founder of browserless, shares how he built browserless from a painful browser automation problem into a profitable, bootstrapped DevTools company. We cover the first customer, content-led growth, selling to developers, and the realities of building a durable software business.

Links:
• Joel's LinkedIn
• browserless
• Browserless' YouTube
• Browserless' blog
• Browserless' Linkedin

Episode 188

May 27, 202616:51

Cloudflare devs @ AI Engineers Europe (Sunil Pai, Matt Carey & Thomas Ankcorn)

In this episode, some of Cloudflare's dev team - Sunil Pai, Matt Carey, and Thomas Ankcorn join us from AI Engineers Europe to discuss code mode, radical simplicity and Pi.

Links:
- Cloudflare
- Sunil Pai
- Matt Carey
- Thomas Ankcorn

Episode 187

May 19, 202617:39

Making AI multiplayer with Maggie Appleton from GitHub Next @ AIE Europe

In this episode, Maggie Appleton from GitHub Next explains why "single player" AI tools are creating a team alignment crisis. We discuss the shift from solo CLI instances to multiplayer agentic environments, the launch of ACE (Agentic Collaboration Environment), and why the future of software isn't just about writing code faster—it's about using proactive agents to bridge the gap between developers, researchers, and the social fabric of a company.

This was recorded at AI Engineer Europe.

Links:

Maggie Appleton https://maggieappleton.com/
GitHub Next https://githubnext.com/

Episode 186

May 18, 202610:51

AI broke traditional infra - with Kyle from Depot.dev @ AIE Europe

In this episode, Kyle Galbraith from Depot shares the story behind building Depot CI and why traditional infrastructure is "crumbling" under the weight of AI-generated code. We discuss the shift from human-centric pipelines to agent-augmented workflows, the challenge of managing a 10x increase in code volume, and Kyle’s perspective on the rising tech hubs across Europe.

Links:
- Depot
- Kyle Galbraith

Episode 185

May 7, 202628:28

Nick and Zack from WorkOS @ AIE: building real-world AI tools & running conference workshops

In this episode, Zack Proser and Nick Nisi from WorkOS share what they’ve learned from building real-world AI tools and running high-impact workshops for AI engineers. We talk about finding "developer balance" by feeding biometric data into LLMs, the evolution of "skills" as a software primitive, and how to build seamless agentic loops that connect Slack, Linear, and Notion to eliminate context switching.

Links:
- WorkOS
- Zack Proser
- Nick Nisi

Episode 184

May 6, 202643:46

What’s Working in DevTools Marketing Right Now? with Karl Hughes from Draft.dev

In this episode, Karl Hughes from Draft.dev shares what he learned from surveying DevTools marketers about budgets, AI, content, and ROI. We talk about budgets, AI workflows, content strategy, distribution, and why events and human relationships still drive some of the best results in developer marketing.

Links:
• Draft.dev
• Karl Hughes
• Karl's LinkedIn

Episode 183

May 1, 202641:13

Charity Majors on AI, Observability, and the Future of Software

In the episode Charity Majors, founder and CTO of Honeycomb, talks about what changes when the cost of generating code drops toward zero. She explains why observability becomes the source of truth, why great products still depend on taste, and how fast feedback loops let teams ship faster without breaking everything.

We also get into why engineering teams need to speak in terms of business value, and how Charity thinks about writing, credibility, and building a public voice as a technical founder.

Links:
• Honeycomb
• Charity's blog
• Observability Engineering book

Episode 182

Apr 23, 202656:18

Jakub Czakon - founder of Developer Markepear and former CMO of Neptune.ai (acquired by OpenAI)

Jakub Czakon (Kuba) was until very recently the CMO of Neptune.ai, which was just acquired by OpenAI for an undisclosed amount.

He also writes Developer Markepear - my favourite DevTools marketing resource.

Links:

Episode 181

Apr 16, 202611:50

Matt Aitken from Trigger.dev @ AIE

Matt Aitken is the cofounder and CEO of Trigger.dev - an AI workflows platform.

Links:
- Trigger.dev
- Matt Aitken
- AIE Europe

Episode 180

Apr 14, 20269:26

Lawrence Jones from Incident.io @ AIE Europe: building an AI SRE

Recorded at AI Engineers Europe, Lawrence Jones is an AI engineer at Incident.io and he shares his experiences building an AI SRE.

Links:
- Incident.io https://incident.io/
- Lawrence Jones https://www.linkedin.com/in/lawrence2jones/