#ai-agents
408 episodes
#4902: Backward Batching: Fixing Slow Uploads Without Blocking Users
How one developer used background threads and deferred AI processing to fix a cataloguing workflow.
#4836: When AI Actually Touches Money
How Amazon uses LLMs to classify damage and set refunds — and the guardrail stack that keeps the AI from touching the dollar amount directly.
#4834: Why Your AI Bill Keeps Surprising You
How a 37-cent project and a $100 simulation reveal the hidden math of AI API pricing.
#4825: Russian Dolls: Skills, MCPs, and Plugins
When to use a skill vs MCP vs plugin in Claude Code — and when to keep it simple.
#4822: Cloud-Local AI Hybrid: Does It Actually Work?
Can you pair Claude's reasoning with a local Qwen 7B for savings? The gap is wider than you think.
#4815: Agent Framework Lock-In: What Actually Breaks
Code-defined vs visual builders. LangGraph vs CrewAI. How portable are agent workflows really?
#4814: The Manager Agent Nobody Sees
How supervisor agents orchestrate AI pipelines without generating content—and the three ways they fail.
#4757: AI Agents Need a New Identity Model
How composite identity and short-lived credentials replace API keys for autonomous AI agents.
#4753: Cookies as AI Credentials: The Auth Problem
How to get browser cookies into an AI agent's hands — and why they expire so fast.
#4752: How AI Agents Map Websites to Build Stable Plugins
An AI agent explores DOM and network layers to build self-healing browser plugins.
#4751: AI Agents vs Anti-Bot Systems
Why AI agents get blocked by anti-bot systems and what actually works to get through.
#4750: Reverse-Engineering Hidden Web APIs
How to find undocumented APIs in your browser's network tab and hand them to AI agents.
#4740: Why FTP Still Exists and SSH Won't Die
FTP from 1985 is still not deprecated. SSH from 1995 keeps evolving. What determines which protocols survive?
#4725: Software Evaluation as a Career Path
The hidden career track for people who love evaluating SaaS tools, building matrices, and becoming the go-to software decision-maker.
#4720: Compass vs. Warning Sign: Prompting for Long-Term AI
How positive and negative instructions reshape AI behavior differently — and why "preserve this" beats "fix this" in system prompts.
#4713: MCP vs Browser-Use: The Agentic AI Showdown
Two patterns are fighting to define how AI agents interact with software. Which one wins shapes the next decade of building.
#4712: Codex vs Claude Code: The Real Agentic Coding Showdown
Benchmarks, model variants, and MCP setups — which coding agent actually wins where it matters?
#4711: When AI Agents Need a Compliance Checkbox
ISO 42001 is coming for your agentic pipeline. Small businesses need to know what's heading their way.
#4704: Building a Unified AI Filesystem with Rclone and MinIO
How to build a single virtual filesystem for AI agents across multiple cloud storage providers — without the token headaches.
#4701: Why Claude Code Re-Introduces Itself to Your Repo
Claude Code remembers your preferences but not your codebase. We explore why that's by design and how to work around it.
#4700: Browser Agents: Three Paths to One Protocol
How screenshot watching, dev-tools extensions, and native MCP in Chrome are converging — and what wins.
#4699: The Hidden Engine: What Makes Claude Code Tick
Is it the model or the harness? We break down the invisible scaffolding that turns LLMs into real agents.
#4691: The Machine Lane: When AI Agents Call Your Business
What if your business phone menu had a button for AI callers? The search for who's building it — and why nobody has.
#4686: How Claude Code's Patience Works: Fork, Wait, and the Transcript Stack
Claude Code's "waiting" is an illusion. We break down the Unix primitives behind its background task system and where the analogy cracks.