TestGuild Automation Podcast

TestGuild Automation Podcast (formally Test Talks) is a weekly podcast hosted by Joe Colantonio, which geeks out on all things software test automation. TestGuild Automation covers news found in the testing space, reviews books about automation, and speaks with some of the thought leaders in the test automation field. We'll aim to interview some of today's most successful and inspiring software engineers, and test automation thought leaders.

Last refreshed: June 16th, 2026 at 10:33 AM ⓘ

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Episodes

AI QA Agents Explained: How Amikoo Helps Testers with Ivan Barajas Vargas

What happens to QA when AI is writing ten times more code than your team can test? That is the exact problem Ivan Barajas Vargas set out to solve with Amikoo, a purpose-built AI QA agent designed to help testers, SDETs, and even developers move faster without sacrificing coverage or quality. Ivan is no stranger to AI in testing. Before generative AI became mainstream, he co-founded MuukTest, a test automation platform built on symbolic reasoning and expert systems. After six years and thousands ...

Jun 16, 2026•35 min

The AI Illusion: Why Testing Still Needs Humans with Joe Colantonio

Everyone is talking about AI replacing testers, writing tests, and transforming software quality. But what if we're asking the wrong question? In this solo episode, Joe Colantonio shares a growing concern he's seen while traveling across the country for TestGuild IRL events: a decline in testing fundamentals at the exact moment AI hype is reaching a fever pitch. Drawing insights from Carissa Véliz's book Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, Wayne Roseberry's work on AI and ...

Jun 09, 2026•16 min

AI Agents in QA: How to Keep Up with AI-Driven Dev Velocity with Vilhelm von Ehrenheim

AI coding tools promised to make development faster — and they delivered. But here's the problem nobody talks about enough: when you speed up coding, you don't eliminate the bottleneck in the SDLC. You just move it. And for most teams, it lands squarely in QA. In this episode, Joe sits down with Vilhelm von Ehrenheim, Co-founder and Chief AI Officer of QA.tech, to dig into how agentic AI is reshaping software testing from the ground up. Vilhelm brings serious ML credibility, he helped build Moth...

Jun 02, 2026•35 min

Maestro MCP, AI Mobile Testing That Fixes Its Own Tests with Leland Takamine

What happens when AI agents can not only write mobile app code, but also validate their own work automatically? In this episode, I sit down with Maestro Co-founder and CEO Leland Takamine to explore one of the biggest shifts happening in software testing right now: agentic mobile testing. Leland shares how his team went from solving mobile performance testing challenges to building one of the fastest-growing mobile automation frameworks used by companies like Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and DoorDas...

May 19, 2026•38 min

AI Testing Costs, How to Prevent Runaway Token Bills with Arthur Hicken

AI-powered testing tools are exploding across software engineering teams… but so are the hidden costs. In this episode, Joe sits down with Arthur Hicken to unpack the growing problem of runaway AI token usage, unexpected LLM billing, and the operational risks of deploying AI agents into testing and DevOps pipelines. Inspired by Arthur's article on the emerging "Token Tax," this conversation explores why many teams are underestimating the true cost of AI automation. You'll learn: Why AI-generated...

May 12, 2026•39 min

Stop Rewriting Tests: How to Add AI to Selenium and Playwright Without Starting Over with Alex Rodionov

AI-powered testing tools promise faster automation and less maintenance, but most require teams to abandon their existing frameworks. In this episode, we explore Alumnium, an opensource AI-native end-to-end testing solution created by Alex Rodionov, an engineer at Airbnb and a tech lead on the Selenium project. Instead of replacing tools like Playwright or Selenium, Alumnium adds an AI layer on top, helping teams: Reduce test maintenance by removing brittle locators Build more resilient, self-he...

May 05, 2026•30 min

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