Dex Horthy on Ralph, RPI, and escaping the "Dumb Zone"

Is the traditional engineering backlog officially a thing of the past? Andrew and Ben explore the principles of outcome engineering and how continuous productivity is permanently changing how software gets built. They also examine a busy week of industry news, from Peter Steinberger joining OpenAI to the amusing and bewildering story of a hit piece written by an autonomous AI agent. Finally, the hosts break down the existential crises of Gemini 3 Pro inside a virtual village and why Meta product managers are rebranding themselves as AI builders.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 stories:OpenAI's acquisition of OpenClaw signals the beginning of the end of the ChatGPT eraAn AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on MeOutcome EngineeringThe Drama and Dysfunction of Gemini 2.5 and 3 ProSeveral Meta employees have started calling themselves 'AI builders'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.

When the Ralph autonomous loop was born, Dex Horthy was "in the garden," witnessing the spark that set the AI engineering community on fire. Andrew sits down with the HumanLayer founder to discuss how to escape the "Dumb Zone" by applying his strict RPI (Research, Plan, Implement) methodology - a process that forces agents to generate intermediate design artifacts and align on architectural decisions before writing a single line of code. They also break down the brutal economics of agentic coding, recounting how Dex’s team used autonomous loops to clone six sponsor products overnight at a hackathon.Follow the show:Subscribe to our Substack Follow us on LinkedInSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelLeave us a ReviewFollow the hosts:Follow AndrewFollow BenFollow DanArticles & Talks:No Vibes Allowed: Solving Hard Problems in Complex Codebases: Dex’s viral talk from the AI Engineer World’s Fair that introduced the "Dumb Zone" concept.The AI Vampire: Steve Yegge’s reflection on burnout and agentic economics.12-Factor Agents: Human Layer’s methodology for building reliable agentic systems.Follow today's guest:Website: humanlayer.devTwitter: @dexhorthyLinkedIn: Dexter HorthyOFFERS 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.

Did AI agents just DDoS GitHub? Andrew and Ben are joined by Warp Founder and CEO Zach Lloyd to discuss the massive strain agentic workflows are putting on our infrastructure and why the "Monday Morning Commit Spike" is the new normal. They also dive into Steve Yegge’s reflective piece on the "AI Vampire" and the economic pressure on developers to output 10x results without 10x pay. Finally, Zach unveils "Oz," Warp's new platform designed to move agents off your laptop and into the cloud for better orchestration, security, and team collaboration.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:GitHub: GitHub appears to be struggling with measly three nines availabilityThe AI Vampire: Read Steve Yegge's ArticleOpen Coding Agents: Tim Dettmers/AI2 Research on Open Coding Agents (SERA)Listen to: The future of the terminal is not a terminalWarp Oz: Introducing Oz: The Orchestration Platform for Cloud AgentsBlog: Introducing Oz: the orchestration platform for cloud agentsConnect with Zach Lloyd: 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.

Is Slack just a chat app, or is it becoming the command line for the agentic future? Andrew sits down with Kurtis Kemple, Senior Director of DevRel at Slack, to discuss the platform's evolution into an "agentic work operating system" where humans and bots collaborate in real-time. They explore the concept of "leaky prompts," how to harness unstructured chat data to drive automation, and share practical advice on how engineering leaders can start deploying their own custom agents to reclaim their time.Watch the Vibe Coding Session: If you enjoyed this conversation, subscribe to the Dev Interrupted YouTube Channel to watch Andrew and Kurtis vibe code together!LinearBUnify your Copilot and Cursor impact metricsFollow 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:Slack for Developers: api.slack.comSalesforce Agentforce: Learn more about AgentforceBolt for JavaScript: Slack's FrameworkConnect with Kurtis on LinkedIn 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.

What happens when 1.7 million autonomous agents build their own social network and start hiring humans for physical labor? Andrew and Ben break down the most surreal week in AI history - from the Moltbook social network to the Rent-a-Human marketplace - and debate whether vibe coding is killing open source. Later, they sit down with Gary Lerhaupt, VP of Product Architecture at Salesforce, to discuss the new Connectivity Benchmark report, why monolithic agents are an anti-pattern, and how "Super Agents" are evolving to orchestrate fleets of specialized sub-agents across the enterprise.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:Salesforce Connectivity Benchmark: Read the ReportAgentforce: Learn more about Salesforce AgentsConnect with Gary Lerhaupt: LinkedInMoltbook: The AI social networkRent-a-Human: rentahuman.aiOpenClaw (a.k.a. Moltbot) is everywhere all at once, and a disaster waiting to happenThe Agentic Shift: Redefining Enterprise SDLC from Assistance to AutonomyHow Vibe Coding Is Killing Open SourceOFFERS 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.

AI has successfully solved the blank page problem for developers, but it has created a massive new bottleneck downstream in the SDLC. LinearB CEO Ori Keren joins us to explain why 2026 will be a year of norming as organizations struggle to digest the flood of AI-generated code. In this annual prediction episode, he details why upstream velocity gains are being lost to chaos in reviews and testing. We also discuss why enterprises aren't ready to hand over the keys to autonomous agents and how to build dynamic pipelines based on risk.LinearB Access the AI code review metrics dashboardUnify your Copilot and Cursor impact metricsFollow 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:Follow Ori on 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 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.