Inside OpenRouter’s Tech Stack and Use of Effect #6

Get support from the Effect communityJohn A. De Goes joins Johannes Schickling and Michael Arnaldi to discuss how AI is reshaping software engineering, what developers should still learn, and why Effect’s primitives are especially valuable for coding agents.John is the creator of ZIO, as well as CEO of Ziverge and Golem Cloud.Learn more about and follow John:X // LinkedinMentioned in the episode:Ziverge x Effectful PartershipEffect TS WorkshopThe Primitive is the product blog post.Effect is an ecosystem of tools to build production-grade software in TypeScript.Website & docsCommunity & supportFollow us on X (Twitter)Github#Effect #TypeScript #Ziverge #ZIO #softwareDevelopmentSong: Dosi & Aisake - Cruising [NCS Release]Music provided by NoCopyrightSoundsFree Download/Stream: http://ncs.io/CruisingWatch: http://ncs.lnk.to/CruisingAT/youtube (00:00) - Intro, From ZIO to Effect (06:54) - Software engineering in the age of AI (12:34) - More developers, but a wider skill gap (23:03) - What is still worth learning? (29:40) - Closing the loop around coding agents (39:10) - Preventing engineering skills from atrophying (47:20) - Effect through the eyes of ZIO’s creator (52:42) - Why Effect’s primitives matter more with AI (58:05) - Teaching coding agents to write good Effect code (01:01:25) - Rethinking tests, DRY, and boilerplate (01:08:45) - The Effect Companion (01:18:16) - A role-playing game for learning Effect (01:25:05) - Turning knowledge into a product

Get support from the Effect communityDevin Jameson joins Cause & Effect to talk about Foldkit, an Effect-first frontend framework inspired by Elm architecture. Devin and Johannes Schickling discuss why Foldkit takes a schema-first approach to frontend state, how it differs from React, how commands model side effects, and why this architecture may be especially useful in the age of AI-assisted coding.Effect is an ecosystem of tools to build production-grade software in TypeScript.Website & docsCommunity & supportFollow us on X (Twitter)Github#Effect #TypeScript #Foldkit #softwareDevelopmentSong: Dosi & Aisake - Cruising [NCS Release]Music provided by NoCopyrightSoundsFree Download/Stream: http://ncs.io/CruisingWatch: http://ncs.lnk.to/CruisingAT/youtube (00:00) - Intro (03:24) - Why build a new frontend framework instead of using React? (08:38) - Elm architecture, model-view-update, and frontend state (19:14) - Schema-first frontend development with Effect (22:37) - Foldkit vs React: components, architecture, and AI-readiness (33:09) - Demo: building a Pixel Art app with Foldkit (01:12:28) - Foldkit’s future: V1, testing, UI, MCP, and the Effect ecosystem

Get support from the Effect communityKit Langton joins the podcast to talk about Effect, OpenCode, and what it takes to migrate a large TypeScript codebase to Effect. Enjoy a very Kit episode, technical, funny, opinionated, and full of love for effect systems.Follow Kit:- X- YouTube- GitHubMentioned in the video:- effect.solutions- effect.institute- hex.kitlangton.comEffect is an ecosystem of tools to build production-grade software in TypeScript.Website & docsCommunity & supportFollow us on X (Twitter)Github#Effect #TypeScript #OpenCode #softwareDevelopmentSong: Dosi & Aisake - Cruising [NCS Release]Music provided by NoCopyrightSoundsFree Download/Stream: http://ncs.io/CruisingWatch: http://ncs.lnk.to/CruisingAT/youtube (00:00) - Episode highlight: why effect systems matter (00:43) - Meet Kit Langton (03:49) - Effect Institute, Visual Effect, and interactive learning (13:15) - Bringing Effect into OpenCode (19:18) - Schema, branded IDs, and safer types (27:35) - Effect services, layers, and architecture (32:28) - Testing LLM workflows with Effect (46:24) - Incremental adoption in a real TypeScript codebase (50:44) - effect.solutions and agent-ready patterns (01:00:36) - Layers, dependencies, observability, and telemetry (01:16:58) - AI-first coding workflows (01:34:35) - Using Effect v4 in OpenCode (01:36:56) - What’s next for OpenCode (01:42:33) - Closing thoughts

Get support from the Effect communityIn this episode, Johannes Schickling talks with Adam Rankin, CTO at Warp, about using Effect to bring structure and composability to a growing TypeScript codebase, enabling a small, fast-moving team to stay productive while shipping reliable payment & payroll systems.Jobs at Warp.Effect is an ecosystem of tools to build production-grade software in TypeScript.Website & docsCommunity & supportFollow us on X (Twitter)Github#Effect #TypeScript #Warp #softwareDevelopmentSong: Dosi & Aisake - Cruising [NCS Release]Music provided by NoCopyrightSoundsFree Download/Stream: http://ncs.io/CruisingWatch: http://ncs.lnk.to/CruisingAT/youtube (00:00) - Intro (01:45) - Adam’s background & early startup experience (08:18) - Warp's origin story (17:36) - What made Effect click for Warp (29:24) - Getting started with Effect (AI browser agent) (34:52) - Onboarding developers to Effect (42:17) - Benefits of composability in payment systems (43:53) - Warp’s system architecture (56:48) - Closing thoughts

Get support from the Effect communityLouis Vichy, co-founder of OpenRouter, joins Johannes Schickling and Michael Arnaldi to talk about OpenRouter’s TypeScript stack, internal tooling powered by Effect, and the engineering challenges of scaling an AI platform processing trillions of tokens weekly.Effect is an ecosystem of tools to build production-grade software in TypeScript.Website & docsCommunity & supportFollow us on X (Twitter)Github#Effect #TypeScript #Spiko #softwareDevelopmentSong: Dosi & Aisake - Cruising [NCS Release]Music provided by NoCopyrightSoundsFree Download/Stream: http://ncs.io/CruisingWatch: http://ncs.lnk.to/CruisingAT/youtube (00:00) - Guest Intro & OpenRouter (07:45) - Why Everything Runs in TypeScript (15:43) - Scaling & Routing in OpenRouter’s Infrastructure (18:03) - Michael’s Story: Why Effect Was Born (23:11) - Effect vs. Result Types and Error Handling (26:04) - Culture, Hiring & Engineering Consistency (30:48) - The Case for Gradual Effect Adoption (32:30) - Generators, Pipe, and Functional Design (47:41) - Observability & Concurrency (58:35) - Agentic Systems, Orchestration & Observability (01:16:41) - Using Effect in OpenRouter’s Internal Tooling

Get support from the Effect communityThis podcast episode features Samuel Briole, CTO of Spiko, a Paris-based FinTech startup building infrastructure for issuing regulated financial products on public blockchains, specifically risk-free products. Spiko utilizes the Effect extensively from day one, for both backend and frontend development, particularly for managing asynchronous operations, API integrations, and smart contracts.Learn more about & follow Samuel:LinkedInGitHubeffect-messagingEffect is an ecosystem of tools to build production-grade software in TypeScript.Website & docsCommunity & supportFollow us on X (Twitter)Github#Effect #TypeScript #Spiko #softwareDevelopmentSong: Dosi & Aisake - Cruising [NCS Release]Music provided by NoCopyrightSoundsFree Download/Stream: http://ncs.io/CruisingWatch: http://ncs.lnk.to/CruisingAT/youtube (15:12) - Event-Driven Systems (22:45) - Choosing RabbitMQ over Kafka or NATS (28:26) - Why they built effect-messaging (39:53) - Effect Schema, Versioning, Async Messaging (46:44) - Agents & Effect AI (53:21) - Closing Thoughts & Looking Ahead

In this episode of Cause & Effect, Johannes Schickling is joined by Dillon Mulroy, Domains Lead at Vercel, who shares his personal journey with Effect and how Vercel gradually adopted it across their Domains platform. Dillon explains why Effect feels like having superpowers for error handling, observability, testing, and more.Whether you're skeptical or already experimenting with Effect, this conversation offers clarity, nuance, and inspiration. Enjoy!Effect is an ecosystem of tools to build production-grade software in TypeScript.Website & docsCommunity & supportFollow us on X (Twitter)Github#Effect #TypeScript #Vercel #softwareDevelopmentSong: Dosi & Aisake - Cruising [NCS Release]Music provided by NoCopyrightSoundsFree Download/Stream: http://ncs.io/CruisingWatch: http://ncs.lnk.to/CruisingAT/youtube (00:00) - Intro (03:00) - How Vercel Adopted Effect (10:57) - Dillon’s background (16:27) - Effect DX (22:13) - Lessons from other stacks (25:18) - From Skeptic to Advocate (31:13) - Effect's Incremental Adoption (42:31) - Effect ≠ RxJS, Effect vs Ramda (48:24) - Effect's superpowers at Vercel (52:31) - Wrap-Up & What’s Next

In this episode of Cause & Effect, Johannes Schickling had a conversation with David Golightly, Staff Engineer at MasterClass, to explore how his team built Cortex – a real-time voice AI orchestration layer that powers personalized conversations with celebrity instructors like Gordon Ramsay and Mark Cuban.Effect is an ecosystem of tools to build production-grade software in TypeScript.Website & docsCommunity & supportFollow us on X (Twitter)Github#Effect #TypeScript #Zendesk #softwareDevelopmentSong: Dosi & Aisake - Cruising [NCS Release]Music provided by NoCopyrightSoundsFree Download/Stream: http://ncs.io/CruisingWatch: http://ncs.lnk.to/CruisingAT/youtube (00:00) - Intro & David's background (04:56) - Discovering Effect & early impressions (08:32) - Why RxJS wasn’t enough for Cortex (16:15) - MasterClass On Call (19:10) - Building the orchestration layer (25:30) - Incremental adoption of Effect at MasterClass (31:43) - Text-to-speech component (40:08) - Error handling, observability, open-telemetry (01:01:20) - Looking ahead: Effect 4.0 & the future (01:08:00) - Closing thoughts

Join us as we talk with Michael Fester from Markprompt about scaling AI-powered customer support with Effect, building reliable and high-performance infrastructure, and enhancing developer productivity in a fast-evolving AI landscape.Effect is an ecosystem of tools to build production-grade software in TypeScript.Website & docsCommunity & supportFollow us on X (Twitter)Github#Effect #TypeScript #Zendesk #softwareDevelopmentSong: Dosi & Aisake - Cruising [NCS Release]Music provided by NoCopyrightSoundsFree Download/Stream: http://ncs.io/CruisingWatch: http://ncs.lnk.to/CruisingAT/youtube (00:00) - - Welcome & guest introduction (01:54) - - Michael's journey: from academia to AI & Customer Support (03:49) - - What is Markprompt? Overview & use cases (07:45) - - Markprompt's system architecture (10:22) - - Challenges of running AI-powered support systems (13:20) - - Improving reliability with Effect (16:41) - - Technical architecture breakdown (19:51) - - The public API server setup (23:50) - - Ingestion engine (26:29) - - Onboarding engineers to Effect (30:51) - - Migrating the codebase to Effect (35:19) - - Effect in production: the power of schema (39:02) - - Migrating to Effect: challenges & key takeaways (41:45) - - Effect brings out the best in us engineers (45:34) - - The Future of AI infrastructure (50:18) - - Closing remarks & thanks

In this episode, Attila Večerek, Tech Lead & Staff Engineer, joins our host Johannes Schickling to discuss how Zendesk incrementally adopted Effect in a polyglot environment with a large codebase.Effect is an ecosystem of tools to build production-grade software in TypeScript.Website & docsCommunity & supportFollow us on X (Twitter)Github#Effect #TypeScript #Zendesk #softwareDevelopmentSong: Dosi & Aisake - Cruising [NCS Release]Music provided by NoCopyrightSoundsFree Download/Stream: http://ncs.io/CruisingWatch: http://ncs.lnk.to/CruisingAT/youtube (00:00) - Intro (03:13) - Being an engineer at Zendesk (06:05) - Challenging the status quo (13:10) - Introducing TypeScript at Zendesk (20:22) - Adopting fp-ts (25:19) - The transition from fp-ts to Effect (31:00) - DX adopting Effect (37:15) - Implementing a Kafka consumer with Effect (42:18) - Dependency injection (48:33) - The power of TypeScript & Effect (53:03) - Onboarding developers to Effect at Zendesk (01:15:37) - Excitement for Effect Cluster (01:19:30) - Outro