Description: Sam Hesson — technical founder and newly minted member of Meta's AI incubation team — joins the AI Tinkerers One-Shot podcast for a deep-dive into the custom CI/CD pipeline he built to orchestrate parallel AI agents at scale. Sam became notorious for spending $50,000 on tokens in just two months while pushing the limits of what agentic development systems can do. In this episode, he shares his complete architecture. Sam walks through his "Token Abundance Mindset" and explains why mo...
Feb 25, 2026•54 min•Season 2Ep. 4
In this conversation, Eric Simons, founder and CEO of StackBlitz, walks through one of the fastest and most consequential pivots in modern developer tooling. After nearly seven years building deep browser infrastructure and reaching roughly $700k in ARR, the company reoriented around Bolt, effectively defining the vibe-coding category and scaling past $15M ARR in a matter of months. We go under the hood of the WebAssembly-based architecture that lets Bolt run a full Node.js environment directly ...
Jan 29, 2026•54 min•Season 2Ep. 3
In this episode of AI Tinkerers One-Shot , Joe sits down with Andrew Baker —serial builder, former Twilio engineer, and hands-on experimenter in agentic systems—to explore the rapidly evolving frontier of browser automation and AI-driven agents . Andrew shares how his journey began with simple scripting experiments and gradually evolved into sophisticated browser agents capable of handling complex, real-world workflows. One standout example: an airline seat selector that used browser agents to s...
Jan 16, 2026•24 min•Season 2Ep. 2
What happens when a lifelong tinkerer turns curiosity into two major AI companies? In this episode of AI Tinkerers One Shot, Joe talks with Lukas Biewald—founder of Weights & Biases and CrowdFlower—about how early projects like robot cars and Raspberry Pi experiments shaped his engineering mindset and entrepreneurial path. Chapters: 00:00 — Intro & Guest Background 02:07 — Early Tinkering and CrowdFlower 03:06 — Building Robot Cars and Meeting Pete Warden 08:41 — From Tinkering to Weight...
Jan 05, 2026•43 min•Season 2Ep. 1
In this episode of AI Tinkerers One-Shot, Joe sits down with Steve Yegge—engineer and creator of the Beads framework—to explore how open source tools are transforming the way we build with AI. Steve shares the story behind Beads, a new framework that gives coding agents memory and task management, enabling them to work longer, smarter, and more autonomously. From his days at Amazon and Google to leading engineering at Sourcegraph, Steve reveals how Beads is already reshaping developer workflows ...
Nov 26, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 30
What if your home robot didn’t just clean, but felt alive — learning, adapting, and becoming part of your family? In this episode of AI Tinkerers One-Shot, Joe talks with Axel Peytavin, Co-founder & CEO of Innate, about his mission to create robots that aren’t just functional, but truly responsive companions. From his early start coding at age 11 to building one of the first GPT-4 Vision-powered robots, Axel shares how his team is creating an open-source robotics kit and one of the first age...
Oct 17, 2025•1 hr 18 min•Season 1Ep. 29
Learn how to demystify large language models by building GPT-2 from scratch — in a spreadsheet. In this episode, MIT engineer Ishan Anand breaks down the inner workings of transformers in a way that’s visual, interactive, and beginner-friendly, yet deeply technical for experienced builders. What you’ll learn: • How GPT-2 became the architectural foundation for modern LLMs like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and LLaMA. • The three major innovations since GPT-2 — mixture of experts, RoPE (rotary positio...
Oct 17, 2025•1 hr 16 min•Season 1Ep. 28
In this episode of AI Tinkerers Global Stage, we go deep with Steve Krenzel, founder of LogicLoop and ex-CTO office at Brex. Steve shows us how his company turns standard operating procedures (SOPs) into fully functioning APIs—complete with schema generation, test cases, structured outputs, and backtesting—within seconds. We break down: 1. Why Steve avoids agentic frameworks 2. How Logic automates 100K+ tasks/month for real customers 3. The power of structured output for reasoning and reliabilit...
Oct 17, 2025•1 hr 6 min•Season 1Ep. 27
Discover how Robert Lukoszko, CEO of Stormy AI, is building the future of AI-powered marketing by automating influencer outreach end-to-end. This interview goes deep into his journey from viral AI demos to Y Combinator, revealing critical insights for AI builders and founders. You’ll learn: • The surprising challenges and limitations of building AI applications that deeply integrate with operating systems. • Why local AI models, despite their appeal, often struggle to compete with cloud-based so...
Oct 17, 2025•56 min•Season 1Ep. 26
Discover how AI is bridging the communication gap between humans and dogs, unlocking deeper insights into canine emotions, intentions, and even health. In this One-Shot interview, Praful Mathur, founder of Sarama, shares his groundbreaking work on a full-stack AI system designed to interpret dog vocalizations and body language. Praful, an experienced builder in AI, reveals how his innovative approach could transform our understanding of our furry companions. What you’ll learn: • The surprising h...
Oct 17, 2025•48 min•Season 1Ep. 25
What you’ll learn: • How reinforcement learning can reduce AI agent error rates by up to 60% and drastically lower inference costs. • The critical difference between supervised fine-tuning and RL for agentic workflows, and why RL is essential for true agent reliability. • A practical, code-level walkthrough of building and training an email search agent that outperforms OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 on a 14-billion-parameter open-source model. • Strategies for generating high-quality synthetic data and desig...
Oct 17, 2025•51 min•Season 1Ep. 24
Discover a groundbreaking approach to optimizing Large Language Models with Tomasz Kolinko, a true OG tinkerer and entrepreneur. In this One-Shot interview, Tomasz unveils his 'Effort Engine,' a novel algorithm that dynamically selects which computations are performed during LLM inference, allowing for significant speed improvements while maintaining surprising output quality. Learn how this method goes beyond traditional quantization by dynamically managing computations and even enabling partia...
Oct 17, 2025•48 min•Season 1Ep. 23
Discover how to build powerful AI agents that integrate with your personal communication, as Luke Harris, Head of Growth at ElevenLabs, shares his journey and groundbreaking projects. Luke, a true tinkerer, reveals how he built the most popular WhatsApp MTP server and an ingenious iPhone shortcut for superior voice transcription. What you’ll learn: • The surprising gap in consumer AI and how to build solutions for it. • Practical insights into building secure AI agent systems and managing data p...
Oct 17, 2025•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 22
Discover how to build powerful AI agents that integrate with your personal communication, as Luke Harris, Head of Growth at ElevenLabs, shares his journey and groundbreaking projects. Luke, a true tinkerer, reveals how he built the most popular WhatsApp MTP server and an ingenious iPhone shortcut for superior voice transcription. What you’ll learn: • The surprising gap in consumer AI and how to build solutions for it. • Practical insights into building secure AI agent systems and managing data p...
Oct 17, 2025•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 21
Learn how to integrate AI agents directly into your existing applications and unlock new levels of user experience and developer productivity with Atai Barkai, CEO of CopilotKit. Discover how CopilotKit provides the essential infrastructure to bridge advanced AI models with your current software stack, making your applications smarter and more intuitive. What you’ll learn: • How CopilotKit’s CoAgents and AGUI protocol simplify the integration of AI agents into any application, regardless of fram...
Oct 17, 2025•23 min•Season 1Ep. 20
Learn how to integrate AI agents directly into your existing applications and unlock new levels of user experience and developer productivity with Atai Barkai, CEO of CopilotKit. Discover how CopilotKit provides the essential infrastructure to bridge advanced AI models with your current software stack, making your applications smarter and more intuitive. What you’ll learn: • How CopilotKit’s CoAgents and AGUI protocol simplify the integration of AI agents into any application, regardless of fram...
Oct 17, 2025•23 min•Season 1Ep. 19
What if you could skip half of your LLM’s computations—and still get the same output? In this episode of One-Shot, we sit down with Tomasz Kolinko, the Warsaw-based founder of Effort Engine—a new AI inference algorithm that dynamically adjusts precision in real time. This isn’t quantization. It’s something weirder—and maybe more useful. Tomasz walks us through how he: - Built a custom algorithm that runs 2–3x faster on MacBooks - Developed a system that can skip 50%+ of model computations dynami...
Oct 17, 2025•47 min•Season 1Ep. 18
In this episode of AI Tinkerers "One-Shot", we go deep with Steve Krenzel, founder of Logic, on how his company turns standard operating procedures (SOPs) into fully functioning APIs. Dive deep with us on schema generation, test cases, structured outputs, and backtesting. We break down: 1. Why Steve avoids agentic frameworks 2. How Logic automates 100K+ tasks/month for real customers 3. The power of structured output for reasoning and reliability 4. How prompt caching and append-only templates u...
Oct 17, 2025•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 17
What if building complex AI agents felt as natural as composing React components—and they could even rewrite their own code? 🤯 In this episode of One Shot / AI Tinkerers, host Joe sits down with Evan Boyle, founder of GenSX, to explore a radically new way to design, run, and ship long-running agent workflows: 🔑 Key takeaways - React-inspired component model for agents – why JSX-style, type-safe functions beat static graphs for scalability and code reuse. - Traces, telemetry & evals baked-i...
Oct 17, 2025•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 15
What if building complex AI agents felt as natural as composing React components—and they could even rewrite their own code? 🤯 In this episode of One Shot / AI Tinkerers, host Joe sits down with Evan Boyle, founder of GenSX, to explore a radically new way to design, run, and ship long-running agent workflows: 🔑 Key takeaways - React-inspired component model for agents – why JSX-style, type-safe functions beat static graphs for scalability and code reuse. - Traces, telemetry & evals baked-i...
Oct 17, 2025•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 16
While most people are still asking ChatGPT to write code snippets, Kevin Leneway is building full-stack products using nothing but prompts. In this One-Shot episode, he reveals the exact system he’s used to launch over 40 startups at Pioneer Square Labs. We break down: - How he writes BRDs and PRDs that don’t suck - Why vibe coding fails and how to actually use AI agents - The markdown checklist that replaces a product team - How to go from idea to working app with zero context switching - His o...
Oct 17, 2025•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 14
While most people are still asking ChatGPT to write code snippets, Kevin Leneway is building full-stack products using nothing but prompts. In this One-Shot episode, he reveals the exact system he’s used to launch over 40 startups at Pioneer Square Labs. We break down: - How he writes BRDs and PRDs that don’t suck - Why vibe coding fails and how to actually use AI agents - The markdown checklist that replaces a product team - How to go from idea to working app with zero context switching - His o...
Oct 17, 2025•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 13
In this episode of the “New AI Tinkerers Podcast,” Joe sits down with Tanya Verma—co-founder of Tinfoil and fresh admit to Y Combinator—to explore how confidential computing is changing the game for AI privacy and security. Tanya explains the concept of “secure enclaves,” hardware-based encryption that keeps your data safe even from the cloud provider. Tanya also discuss real-world use cases for private AI, how open-source models like DeepSpeed Chat stack up, and why privacy is crucial for large...
Oct 17, 2025•43 min•Season 1Ep. 12
AI agents are evolving fast, but what if they could seamlessly integrate with real-world tools, automate workflows, and take action—without breaking security or reliability? In this One-Shot episode, we sit down with Karan from Composio, a cutting-edge AI framework designed to connect LLMs with APIs, streamline tool orchestration, and unlock new levels of agent autonomy. With over 250+ API integrations, Composio is solving one of the biggest hurdles in AI automation: getting things done—securely...
Oct 17, 2025•46 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Vik from Moondream AI joins Joe to demo a vision-language model that runs locally—on your laptop, your phone, even a Raspberry Pi. From visual question answering to gaze detection and UI automation, Vik shows how Moondream is redefining edge computer vision—no cloud required. Whether you're into robotics, home automation, or lightweight AI, this “One-Shot” is packed with insights for builders. Try it yourself at moondream.ai 🚀 00:00 - Intro to Moondream’s compression tech for 2B parameter model...
Oct 17, 2025•43 min•Season 1Ep. 11
What if AI could talk, react, and even mirror human emotions in real-time? In this One-Shot episode, we explore how Tavus is pushing the boundaries of AI-driven avatars—building an experience so fast and fluid, it feels like a real conversation. Brian from Tavus has spent months refining the latency, speech processing, and personality layers of AI avatars, bringing us closer to seamless, interactive digital humans. Meet Brad—an avatar that doesn’t just listen, but truly engages. Here’s what make...
Oct 17, 2025•35 min•Season 1Ep. 9
In this explosive “One-Shot” episode, we’ll dismantle the complexities of building a flying Linux computer—GPU, 5G, real-time inference, and all—and see how voice commands can orchestrate everything from speed adjustments to target tracking. Maxwell Wang, SpaceX software engineer, created Dispatcher, an end-to-end aerial AI system that’s turning sci-fi ambitions into practical, weekend-ready tech. Imagine telling a drone, “Back up 50 meters,” and watching it respond instantly—no clunky menus, no...
Oct 17, 2025•26 min•Season 1Ep. 8
🚀 What If Your AI Could Talk Back in Real-Time? Inside Daily’s Voice Revolution! Join Kwindla Kramer, CEO of Daily, as he unveils the next frontier of conversational AI that’s about to transform how we interact with technology. In this exclusive AI Tinkerers “One-Shot”, discover how real-time voice interfaces are breaking down barriers across industries—from medical support to customer service. Key Breakthroughs: ✨ Ultra-Low-Latency Conversational Agents: Rapid voice-to-voice pipelines that fee...
Oct 17, 2025•54 min•Season 1Ep. 7
Imagine an AI companion that understands your body better than your annual check-up ever could. At the latest AI Tinkerers "One-Shot" session, Varun Pant—AWS engineering manager and robotics innovator—discusses his AI Tinkerers Hackathon Grand Prize winning project, SmartNourish, a groundbreaking human-in-the-loop health monitoring system targeting the 1 in 3 Americans at risk of diabetes. Key Breakthroughs: ✨ Real-time Metabolic Intelligence: Using continuous glucose monitoring and advanced AI,...
Oct 17, 2025•35 min•Season 1Ep. 6
What if your database could instantly spawn unlimited parallel universes for AI agents to explore? In this exclusive AI Tinkerers One-Shot, Nikita Shamgunov, founder of Neon database and former MemSQL founder, reveals how his team is building the database architecture for the AI age. Nikita deep dives into their innovative storage subsystem built in Rust, demonstrating how copy-on-write mechanics make it possible to create database branches in milliseconds, regardless of size. Learn how Neon's a...
Oct 17, 2025•45 min•Season 1Ep. 5
