A constitution for AI, breaking dark flow, and open source as a moat?

In this Friday Deploy, Andrew and Ben dive into the viral Moltbot (now OpenClaw) phenomenon and Steve Yegge's Software Survival 3.0 essay, debating how SaaS companies can build moats in an era of token-constrained engineering. They also explore the concept of "Dark Flow" - a deceptive state where vibe coding feels productive but hides accumulated tech debt - and break down Anthropic's newly released constitution for Claude. Finally, the team discusses a Reddit user’s claim to have ported CUDA to AMD in 30 minutes and shares a fascinating breakdown of podcast listening data.LinearB: The AI productivity platform for engineering leadersFollow the show:Subscribe to our Substack Follow us on LinkedInSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelLeave us a ReviewFollow the hosts:Follow AndrewFollow BenFollow DanFollow today's stories:OpenClawSoftware Survival 3.0Breaking the Spell of Vibe CodingClaude's new constitutionClaude Code Has Managed to Port NVIDIA’s CUDA Backend to ROCmMy Top 25 Podcast Episodes & Interviews from 2025 by IPM (Insights Per Minute)OFFERS Start Free Trial: Get started with LinearB's AI productivity platform for free. Book a Demo: Learn how you can ship faster, improve DevEx, and lead with confidence in the AI era. LEARN ABOUT LINEARB AI Code Reviews: Automate reviews to catch bugs, security risks, and performance issues before they hit production. AI & Productivity Insights: Go beyond DORA with AI-powered recommendations and dashboards to measure and improve performance. AI-Powered Workflow Automations: Use AI-generated PR descriptions, smart routing, and other automations to reduce developer toil. MCP Server: Interact with your engineering data using natural language to build custom reports and get answers on the fly.

If you rely on complex scaffolding to build AI agents you aren't scaling you are coping. Thibault Sottiaux from OpenAI’s Codex team joins us to explain why they are ruthlessly removing the harness to solve for true agentic autonomy. We discuss the bitter lesson of vertical integration, why scalable primitives beat clever tricks, and how the rise of the super bus factor is reshaping engineering careers.LinearB: Measure the impact of GitHub Copilot and CursorFollow the show:Subscribe to our Substack Follow us on LinkedInSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelLeave us a ReviewFollow the hosts:Follow AndrewFollow BenFollow DanFollow today's guest:OpenAI Codex: Learn more about the models powering tools like GitHub Copilot.Codex Open Source Repo: The lightweight coding agent that runs in your terminal (check out the Rust migration mentioned in the episode).Agent Skills Open Standard: The open standard and catalog for giving agents new capabilities.The Bitter Lesson: Richard Sutton’s essay on why compute-centric methods win in AI.Follow Tibo on X @thsottiaux | GitHubOFFERS Start Free Trial: Get started with LinearB's AI productivity platform for free. Book a Demo: Learn how you can ship faster, improve DevEx, and lead with confidence in the AI era. LEARN ABOUT LINEARB AI Code Reviews: Automate reviews to catch bugs, security risks, and performance issues before they hit production. AI & Productivity Insights: Go beyond DORA with AI-powered recommendations and dashboards to measure and improve performance. AI-Powered Workflow Automations: Use AI-generated PR descriptions, smart routing, and other automations to reduce developer toil. MCP Server: Interact with your engineering data using natural language to build custom reports and get answers on the fly.

With the Ralph loop going mainstream, how are engineering organizations utilizing it at scale? Andrew and Ben sit down with Angie Jones, VP of Engineering AI Tools and Enablement at Block, to pick her brain on how they are using the Ralph Wiggum technique to automate updates across 25,000 repos and how she is strategically preparing for Gas Town. The team also breaks down the launch of OpenAI's new GPT-5.2 Codex model before closing out the week with a look at the weirdest tech from CES, from hypersonic knives to music-playing lollipops.LinearB: Measure the impact of GitHub Copilot and CursorFollow the show:Subscribe to our Substack Follow us on LinkedInSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelLeave us a ReviewFollow the hosts:Follow AndrewFollow BenFollow DanFollow today's stories:Angie Jones: angiejones.tech | LinkedIn | X (Twitter)Goose (Block’s AI Agent): github.com/block/gooseSteve Yegge’s "Welcome to Gas Town": Read on MediumGeoffrey Huntley’s Ralph Loop: ghuntley.com/ralphRyan Dahl on the End of Coding: @rough__seaThe Weirdest Tech of CES: Read the ArticleOFFERS Start Free Trial: Get started with LinearB's AI productivity platform for free. Book a Demo: Learn how you can ship faster, improve DevEx, and lead with confidence in the AI era. LEARN ABOUT LINEARB AI Code Reviews: Automate reviews to catch bugs, security risks, and performance issues before they hit production. AI & Productivity Insights: Go beyond DORA with AI-powered recommendations and dashboards to measure and improve performance. AI-Powered Workflow Automations: Use AI-generated PR descriptions, smart routing, and other automations to reduce developer toil. MCP Server: Interact with your engineering data using natural language to build custom reports and get answers on the fly.

Before Backstage became the industry standard for developer portals, Spotify’s engineers relied on spreadsheets to navigate their massive microservices ecosystem.Tyson Singer, Spotify’s Head of Technology and Platforms, joins us to trace the evolution of their internal developer experience from a necessity for order into the open-source giant Backstage and its new SaaS evolution, Portal. We dig into how they use golden paths to align autonomous squads and how their new AI Knowledge Assistant (AiKA) reduced internal support tickets by nearly 50% while protecting developer flow. Finally, Tyson shares his philosophy on sustainable innovation, explaining how to train an engineering organization to run a marathon at a sprinter's pace.LinearB: Measure the impact of GitHub Copilot and CursorFollow the show:Subscribe to our Substack Follow us on LinkedInSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelLeave us a ReviewFollow the hosts:Follow AndrewFollow BenFollow DanFollow today's guest:Spotify Engineering Blog: engineering.spotify.comSpotify Portal: backstage.spotify.comConfidence: confidence.spotify.comConnect with Tyson: LinkedInOFFERS Start Free Trial: Get started with LinearB's AI productivity platform for free. Book a Demo: Learn how you can ship faster, improve DevEx, and lead with confidence in the AI era. LEARN ABOUT LINEARB AI Code Reviews: Automate reviews to catch bugs, security risks, and performance issues before they hit production. AI & Productivity Insights: Go beyond DORA with AI-powered recommendations and dashboards to measure and improve performance. AI-Powered Workflow Automations: Use AI-generated PR descriptions, smart routing, and other automations to reduce developer toil. MCP Server: Interact with your engineering data using natural language to build custom reports and get answers on the fly.

In our first-ever Friday edition, Andrew and Ben dive into the viral "Ralph Loop" phenomenon and discuss how simple bash loops and deterministic context allocation are changing the unit economics of code. They also explore Steve Yegge's chaotic "Gas Town" concept for orchestrating AI agents, debate whether AI is killing the individual contributor role, and share a laugh over a creepy link generator that challenges our trust in URLs. LinearB: Measure the impact of GitHub Copilot and CursorFollow the show:Subscribe to our Substack Follow us on LinkedInSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelLeave us a ReviewFollow the hosts:Follow AndrewFollow BenFollow DanFollow today's stories:Cowork: Claude Code for the rest of your workGas Town Emergency User ManualLoom by Geoffrey HuntleyAI Killed the Individual ContributorCreepyLinkOFFERS Start Free Trial: Get started with LinearB's AI productivity platform for free. Book a Demo: Learn how you can ship faster, improve DevEx, and lead with confidence in the AI era. LEARN ABOUT LINEARB AI Code Reviews: Automate reviews to catch bugs, security risks, and performance issues before they hit production. AI & Productivity Insights: Go beyond DORA with AI-powered recommendations and dashboards to measure and improve performance. AI-Powered Workflow Automations: Use AI-generated PR descriptions, smart routing, and other automations to reduce developer toil. MCP Server: Interact with your engineering data using natural language to build custom reports and get answers on the fly.

Geoffrey Huntley argues that while software development as a profession is effectively dead, software engineering is more alive—and critical—than ever before. In this episode, the creator of the viral "Ralph" agent joins us to explain how simple bash loops and deterministic context allocation are fundamentally changing the unit economics of code. We dive deep into the mechanics of managing "context rot," avoiding "compaction," and why building your own "Gas Town" of autonomous agents is the only way to survive the coming rift.LinearB: Measure the impact of GitHub Copilot and CursorFollow the show:Subscribe to our Substack Follow us on LinkedInSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelLeave us a ReviewFollow the hosts:Follow AndrewFollow BenFollow DanFollow today's guest(s):Geoffrey’s Website & Blog: ghuntley.comBuild Your Own Coding Agent Workshop: ghuntley.com/agent Ralph Wiggum as a Software Engineer: ghuntley.com/ralphSteve Yegge’s "Welcome to Gas Town": Read on MediumThe "Cursed" Programming Language: github.com/ghuntley/cursedOFFERS Start Free Trial: Get started with LinearB's AI productivity platform for free. Book a Demo: Learn how you can ship faster, improve DevEx, and lead with confidence in the AI era. LEARN ABOUT LINEARB AI Code Reviews: Automate reviews to catch bugs, security risks, and performance issues before they hit production. AI & Productivity Insights: Go beyond DORA with AI-powered recommendations and dashboards to measure and improve performance. AI-Powered Workflow Automations: Use AI-generated PR descriptions, smart routing, and other automations to reduce developer toil. MCP Server: Interact with your engineering data using natural language to build custom reports and get answers on the fly.

Capital One operates less like a traditional bank and more like a "technology company that happens to do banking." Ameesh Paleja, EVP of Enterprise Platforms, joins the show to explain how this philosophy empowers their 14,000 technologists to innovate at the speed of a startup despite operating in a highly regulated industry.Watch: 2026 Benchmarks InsightsFollow the show:Subscribe to our Substack Follow us on LinkedInSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelLeave us a ReviewFollow the hosts:Follow AndrewFollow BenFollow DanFollow today's guest(s):Learn more: capitalone.com/techRead the blog: capitalone.com/tech/blog/Connect with Ameesh: LinkedIn | X (Twitter)OFFERS Start Free Trial: Get started with LinearB's AI productivity platform for free. Book a Demo: Learn how you can ship faster, improve DevEx, and lead with confidence in the AI era. LEARN ABOUT LINEARB AI Code Reviews: Automate reviews to catch bugs, security risks, and performance issues before they hit production. AI & Productivity Insights: Go beyond DORA with AI-powered recommendations and dashboards to measure and improve performance. AI-Powered Workflow Automations: Use AI-generated PR descriptions, smart routing, and other automations to reduce developer toil. MCP Server: Interact with your engineering data using natural language to build custom reports and get answers on the fly.

As the year draws to a close, the Dev Interrupted team reflects on a transformative year in engineering spanning the rise of RAG and vector databases to the emergence of agentic workflows. For the first time, we’re taking the conversation out of the booth and into the IDE. Head over to the Dev Interrupted YouTube channel to watch the team vibe code custom holiday cards and close out the year with some chaotic creativity.Watch Part 2 on the Dev Interrupted YouTube channelFollow the show:Subscribe to our Substack Follow us on LinkedInSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelLeave us a ReviewFollow the hosts:Follow AndrewFollow BenFollow DanOFFERS Start Free Trial: Get started with LinearB's AI productivity platform for free. Book a Demo: Learn how you can ship faster, improve DevEx, and lead with confidence in the AI era. LEARN ABOUT LINEARB AI Code Reviews: Automate reviews to catch bugs, security risks, and performance issues before they hit production. AI & Productivity Insights: Go beyond DORA with AI-powered recommendations and dashboards to measure and improve performance. AI-Powered Workflow Automations: Use AI-generated PR descriptions, smart routing, and other automations to reduce developer toil. MCP Server: Interact with your engineering data using natural language to build custom reports and get answers on the fly.

The common narrative suggests AI will make engineering leadership obsolete, but history - and the Industrial Revolution - suggests the opposite is true. Engineering executive Manoj Mohan joins the show live from ELC to argue that as code generation costs drop, the demand for high-level judgment and strategic oversight will only skyrocket. He breaks down why leaders must stop starting with models and start with customer pain points, utilizing his "3GF" framework to manage the risksLinearB: Measure the impact of GitHub Copilot and CursorFollow the show:Subscribe to our Substack Follow us on LinkedInSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelLeave us a ReviewFollow the hosts:Follow AndrewFollow BenFollow DanFollow today's guest(s):Connect with Manoj: LinkedIn | SubstackOFFERS Start Free Trial: Get started with LinearB's AI productivity platform for free. Book a Demo: Learn how you can ship faster, improve DevEx, and lead with confidence in the AI era. LEARN ABOUT LINEARB AI Code Reviews: Automate reviews to catch bugs, security risks, and performance issues before they hit production. AI & Productivity Insights: Go beyond DORA with AI-powered recommendations and dashboards to measure and improve performance. AI-Powered Workflow Automations: Use AI-generated PR descriptions, smart routing, and other automations to reduce developer toil. MCP Server: Interact with your engineering data using natural language to build custom reports and get answers on the fly.

Is your engineering team wasting budget and sacrificing latency by pre-computing data that most users never see? Chalk co-founder Elliot Marx joins Andrew Zigler to explain why the future of AI relies on real-time pipelines rather than traditional storage. They dive into solving compute challenges for major fintechs, the value of incrementalism, Elliot’s thoughts on and why strong fundamental problem-solving skills still beat specific language expertise in the age of AI assistants.Join our AI Productivity roundtable: 2026 Benchmarks Insights*This episode was recorded live at the Engineering Leadership Conference.Follow the show:Subscribe to our Substack Follow us on LinkedInSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelLeave us a ReviewFollow the hosts:Follow AndrewFollow BenFollow DanFollow today's guest(s):Elliot Marx: LinkedIn Chalk: Website | Twitter/X | CareersOFFERS Start Free Trial: Get started with LinearB's AI productivity platform for free. Book a Demo: Learn how you can ship faster, improve DevEx, and lead with confidence in the AI era. LEARN ABOUT LINEARB AI Code Reviews: Automate reviews to catch bugs, security risks, and performance issues before they hit production. AI & Productivity Insights: Go beyond DORA with AI-powered recommendations and dashboards to measure and improve performance. AI-Powered Workflow Automations: Use AI-generated PR descriptions, smart routing, and other automations to reduce developer toil. MCP Server: Interact with your engineering data using natural language to build custom reports and get answers on the fly.