How Two Engineers Ship Like a Team of 15 With AI Agents | Kieran Klaassen, Nityesh Agarwal
If you’re using AI to just write code, you’re missing out.Two engineers at Every shipped six features, five bug fixes, and three infrastructure updates in one week—and they did it by designing workflows with AI agents, where each task makes the next one easier, faster, and more reliable.In this episode of AI & I, Dan Shipper interviewed the pair—Kieran Klaassen, general manager of Cora, our inbox management tool, and Cora engineer Nityesh Agarwal—about how they’re compounding their engineering with AI. They walk Dan through their workflow in Anthropic’s agentic coding tool, Claude Code, and the mental models they’ve developed for making AI agents truly useful. Kieran, our resident AI-agent aficionado, also ranked all the AI coding assistants he’s used.If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share! Want even more?Sign up for Every to unlock our ultimate guide to prompting ChatGPT here: https://every.ck.page/ultimate-guide-to-prompting-chatgpt. It’s usually only for paying subscribers, but you can get it here for free.To hear more from Dan Shipper:Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribe Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/danshipperSponsors:Microsoft TeamsWant seamless collaboration without the cost? Microsoft Teams offers a robust free plan for individuals that delivers unlimited chat, 60-minute video meetings, and file sharing—all within one intuitive workspace that keeps your projects moving forward. Head to https://aka.ms/every to use Teams for free, and experience effortless collaboration, today.Attio: Go to https://www.attio.com/every and get 15% off your first year on your AI-powered CRM.Timestamps:Introduction: 00:01:16Why Kieran believes agents are turning a corner: 00:03:18Why Claude Code stands out from other agents: 00:06:36What makes agentic coding different from using tools like Cursor: 00:11:58The Cora team’s workflow to turn tasks into momentum: 00:15:20How to build a prompt that turns ideas into plans: 00:23:07The new mental models for this age of software engineering: 00:34:00Why traditional tests and evals still matter: 00:39:13Kieran ranks all the AI coding agents he’s used: 00:42:00Links to resources mentioned in the episode:Try Cora, our AI email assistant: https://cora.computer/ Kieran Klaassen: @kieranklaassenNityesh Agarwal: @nityeshagaThe book that helps Nityesh form mental models to work with AI agents: High Output ManagementA guide to Anthropic’s prompt improver: https://www.anthropic.com/news/prompt-improver
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The Future of AI in Medicine: From Rules to Intuition | Awais Aftab, Psychiatrist and writer
OCD treatment changed my life—but it took me a decade of chasing down wrong answers to be diagnosed. In the rush to create scalable treatments, disorders like depression and OCD are squeezed into diagnostic checklists—from which the complexity of the human mind invariably leaks out. The field of psychiatry is broken, and I spoke to someone on the inside about how AI can help fix it .Awais Aftab has been questioning psychiatry’s rigid categories from inside the field. He’s a clinical assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University, editor of Conversations in Critical Psychiatry—an Oxford University Press volume that tackles philosophical and critical perspectives in psychiatry—and author of the Substack newsletter Psychiatry at the Margins. We get into how AI is transforming psychiatry by embracing the complexity of human minds instead of flattening it.If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share! Want even more?Sign up for Every to unlock our ultimate guide to prompting ChatGPT here: https://every.ck.page/ultimate-guide-to-prompting-chatgpt. It’s usually only for paying subscribers, but you can get it here for free.To hear more from Dan Shipper:Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribe Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/danshipper Sponsor: Microsoft TeamsWant seamless collaboration without the cost? Microsoft Teams offers a robust free plan for individuals that delivers unlimited chat, 60-minute video meetings, and file sharing—all within one intuitive workspace that keeps your projects moving forward. Head to https://aka.ms/every to use Teams for free, and experience effortless collaboration, today.Timestamps:Introduction: 00:01:20The case Awais makes for pluralistic thinking in psychiatry: 00:03:38A pragmatic approach to mental healthcare: 00:15:30Awais’s take on why my OCD diagnosis took 10 years: 00:19:04Why psychiatry is stuck where machine learning was decades ago: 00:24:19Why psychiatry’s focus should shift from explanations to predictions: 00:31:05How Awais thinks AI is already changing the psychiatric profession: 00:39:19Links to resources mentioned in the episode:Awais Aftab: @awaisaftab, awais aftab Awais’s Substack: Psychiatry at the MarginsThe book Awais edited: Conversations in Critical Psychiatry
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GitHub CEO on the AI Coding Arms Race: One Agent, 150M+ Devs
GitHub Copilot has 15 million users—more than Cursor and Windsurf combined. So why does it feel like they're losing the AI coding race?Last week at Microsoft Build, I interviewed the CEO of GitHub Thomas Dohmke to find out.I wanted to know: Is their huge existing user base a blessing or a curse? And will their latest launch—an autonomous coding agent built into GitHub—let them retake the lead? Watch this episode of AI & I to find outIf you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share! Want even more?Sign up for Every to unlock our ultimate guide to prompting ChatGPT here: https://every.ck.page/ultimate-guide-to-prompting-chatgpt. It’s usually only for paying subscribers, but you can get it here for free.Sponsor:Attio: Go to https://attio.com/every and get 15% off your first year on your AI-powered CRM.To hear more from Dan Shipper:Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribe Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/danshipper Timestamps:Introduction (00:00:38)Copilot’s place in the AI coding agent race (00:07:40)Inside the product decisions behind Copilot’s new agent (00:10:42)How Dohmke thinks about shaping Copilot’s personality (00:16:18)How GitHub supports both AI-native developers and legacy enterprise users (00:20:29)Dohmke’s predictions for the future of software development (00:26:57)
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Kevin Scott on The Future of Programming, AI Agents, and Microsoft’s Big Bet on the Agentic Web
I interviewed Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott about the future of agents and software engineering for another special edition of AI & I. With 41 years of programming behind him, Kevin has lived through nearly every big shift in modern software development. Here’s his clear-eyed take on what’s changing with AI, and how we can navigate what’s next:The real breakthrough for the agentic web is better plumbing. Kevin thinks agents won’t be useful until they can take action on your behalf by using tools and fetching data. To do this, agents need access across your systems—and Microsoft’s answer is adopting Model Context Protocol, or “MCP,” that allows an agent to access tools and fresh data beyond its knowledge base, as their standard protocol for agents to move through contexts and get things done.How the agentic web echoes the early internet. Just as protocols like HTTP and HTML gave the web a shared language, Kevin believes the agentic web needs its own infrastructure—the first glimpses of this include MCP (the HTTP of agents) and NLWeb, Microsoft’s push to make websites legible to agents (similar to what HTML did for browsers).Open ecosystems can coexist with strong security systems. Kevin argues that the “tradeoff” between ecosystems that allow “permissionless” innovation and robust security is a false dichotomy. With AI agents that understand your personal risk preferences—and know your communication habits across email, text, and other channels—they could detect when something suspicious is happening and act on your behalf. The craftsman’s dilemma in the age of agents. Kevin is a lifelong maker—of software, ceramics, even handmade bags—and he cares deeply about how things are made. Because this can feel at odds with coding with AI agents, Kevin’s approach is to notice where the process matters most to him, and where it's okay to optimize for outcomes. After four decades of seeing breakthrough technologies, his advice is simple: be curious, try stuff, and use it if it works for you.The future of software engineering agents is plural. Kevin believes the future of software engineering agents will be diverse because developers who enjoy the freedom of playing with different tools is one of the most consistent patterns he’s seen in his decades in tech. What will drive this diversity, he says, is builders who deeply understand specific problems and tailor agents to solve them exceptionally well.How agentic workflows will evolve. Kevin sees a shift from short back-and-forth interactions with agents to longer, async feedback loops. As the agentic web matures and model reasoning improves, people will start handing off bigger, more ambitious tasks and letting agents run with them.Timestamps:Introduction: 00:01:44The race to close the “capability overhang”: 00:02:49How agents will evolve into practical, useful tools: 00:04:31The role Kevin sees Microsoft playing in the agent ecosystem: 00:06:48How robust security measures can coexist with open ecosystems: 00:12:05Kevin's philosophy on being a craftsman in the age of agents: 00:15:39How the landscape of software development agents will evolve: 00:20:52The future of agentic workflows: 00:25:33
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OpenAI Launches Codex: An Autonomous Programming Agent
OpenAI just launched Codex, a brand-new coding agent that can build features and fix bugs autonomously. We’ve been testing it at Every for a few days, and I’m impressed.I invited Alexander Embiricos, a member of the OpenAI product staff responsible for Codex, to demo the agent live on a special edition of AI & I. We talk through:What Codex is and how it works. Codex’s UI allows developers to see the list of tasks the agent is working on, how many lines were changed for each, and the status of the PR. It’s built for the senior software engineer who wants to delegate and review tasks efficiently.How OpenAI is thinking about agents. Codex is one piece of a unified super-assistant OpenAI wants to eventually build—an agent that helps users easily get things done by selecting the right tools for them behind the scenes. Why an “abundance mindset” is best for interacting with agents. Codex is designed to allow users to delegate many tasks at once without getting caught up in the details. This lets you point an abundance of agents at a specific task, like a difficult bug—it’s worth it even if only one of them succeeds.OpenAI’s vision for the future of programming. In the future developers will probably spend less time writing routine code and more time guiding agents, reviewing their work, and making strategy decisions. Programming will become more social, letting teams easily delegate multiple tasks at once, allowing people to focus on ideas and collaboration instead of routine coding.Timestamps:Introduction: 00:00:52The product decisions behind Codex’s interface: 00:01:40How Codex works under the hood: 00:06:20Why you need an abundance mindset to work well with agents: 00:14:06Setting Codex to work on a real task in “Ask” mode: 00:16:28How OpenAI is thinking about designing agents: 00:18:54The future of programming is social: 00:31:16Reviewing Codex’s work live: 00:37:21How the landscape of agents will evolve: 00:39:41
Learn how the smartest people in the world are using AI to think, create, and relate. Each week I interview founders, filmmakers, writers, investors, and others about how they use AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Midjourney in their work and in their lives. We screen-share through their historical chats and then experiment with AI live on the show. Join us to discover how AI is changing how we think about our world—and ourselves.
For more essays, interviews, and experiments at the forefront of AI: https://every.to/chain-of-thought?sort=newest.
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