"What if you could merge 600 commits on a single day and none of it was slopp? This is what today's guest, Peter Stainberger, the creator of Claudebot, claims he's doing. Peter is a standout developer ..."

"podcast. >> Thanks for having me, Gay. >> It is awesome to meet you in in person. >> Yeah, and I almost messed it up. >> Yeah. What what what what happened? You lost track of time. Does that happen of..."

"get into tech? So I'm from rural Austria. Um always more being the introvert. So eventually I we always had like summer guests and one of them one of them was a was a computer nerd and then I kind of ..."

"So, I guess a little bit of JavaScript, uh, even though I had no clue what I was doing. And then the actual first language where I I had to learn how to build things is when I started university. And ..."

"just I just silently used net I just didn't tell them and like a few months in I just told them yeah but the text I I did a few modernizations but then it was too late. I did this a few times in this ..."

"got one. I was still not thinking about building for it, you know. That was that was >> when was this 2009 10 something like that. >> Yeah. Yeah. And then I I used their browser. I I can see the story..."

"until anything worked because like I had no idea what I was doing and I was like using all kind of like beta tech but eventually I I got it to work and I I I wrote that company was like hey I'm making..."

"was so proud and I wanted to like tap him on the shoulder and say I built this and I thought like that would be really weird. So I didn't. And then I I I went to the company I worked for for 5 years a..."

"was like, well, f you Apple. >> I did freelance work. I was at dubdub. I was introduced to >> dubdubdubc. >> Yes. Sorry for the insider terms. I was introduced to someone as one of the best iOS develo..."

"a PDF viewer. You know, on every technical problem, the domain is is I wouldn't say like completely unimportant, but you can always find interesting problems in every domain. And there was a lot of in..."

"if he's interested in that, why let's not try to sell it to other people." I used a a WordPress template and mutilated it to run on GitHub pages and then and then when you did the the fast lane flow a..."

"madness this file format is. Peter was talking about how some problems look deceptively simple. PDF rendering is a good example. You look at it and think, how hard could it be? And then you spend mont..."

"And now, let's get back to Peter and why rendering PDFs was a surprisingly hard problem. But now, I remember there was a few weeks ago someone emailed me. They did something PDF and they wanted my hel..."

"know, it was like it was like summer. I was I was like lying at the lake and got another email that someone bought it for 600 bucks, 800 bucks. I just up the prices as it had more features. And by the..."

"uh Sabine my manager came over and said this Peter are you okay? And they gave me a choice uh to either keep working at this company and drop my project or or vice versa. And I had one week to decide...."

"a lot of people in the industry don't get. Uh, so even though we had competitors that had way more features and were around way longer, my company was more successful and my product was more successfu..."

"and I spent pretty much 13 years of my career um building this product with this weird name that I never changed because I took me like I thought like five minutes about it and then stock PSPDF kit. >..."

"worked really well. >> And then what was the text type behind PSPDF kit? Was it objective C? Was it later swift? Were there other technologies like C or or anything else? >> We eventually expanded to ..."

"[ __ ] >> Ah nice. And then a as as a company grew, one thing that I remember about PSPDF kit, you did write a lot of blogs and one blog in 2019, so this was about like I think you know year nine or 1..."

"the go. Like I I never had the urge to be CEO. I always was coding. I I brought people in to people that that helped me a lot with other other parts. Uh and on the business side, I can do it and I I t..."

"security. Instead of sharing over scoped API keys, you can define clear boundaries for the data that agents can access and the agents they can perform. If you're building AI powered features and want ..."

"would either exclude one or the other. If I if I if I go too low, they're going to see this fishy. It's like uh procurement for like 500 bucks. we're not going to even start the process. And if we we ..."

"to be in. So So I found a really interesting niche and there were just an infinite number of complex problems. >> You you you need to tell me tell me one or two hard things about parsing PDF. How hard..."

"redesign the internal part without breaking things for everyone? like suddenly everything has to be lazy where where before parsing 100 one was easy but now they were like this was like so difficult t..."

"that's magical. If you wait one or two days not much difference. Yeah. >> So, yeah, this this was one of the problems where I worked two months and I finally got it down to almost like this. >> Mhm. T..."

"hacker news as well but it was just interesting to read and I couldn't name again I I'm not went into PDFs but if I had to say something a PDF I would have said PSPDF kit because they're the only ones..."

"so many ways and a lot of those bigger companies. Oh, they put on too much red tape. There's a lot of developers who don't really like to write. So I I I forced everyone once a month a full day just t..."

"wild hacks >> um and more iterative. So, so, so it got a little bit less interesting uh over the years and there was like more people drama cuz the more so the more people you have, the more issues th..."

"also quite lonely because you you can't openly talk about a lot of things. I mean I I I I structured the company to be quite open but still like you cannot you cannot be negative. You have to even if ..."

">> I needed a lot of time to decompress. I I catched up a lot on the things I thought I missed. I I a lot. Um there were months where I didn't even turn on my computer. And for a while I was I just di..."

"where you really where and you know, this is like this is a a trap I see with many developers. The the better you get at one technology, the harder it is to jump somewhere else. It's not that you can'..."

"you missed everything else before. and and and you know, you know, it was like I I remember I took this big messy site project that I built and I have this browser extension where that that converts a..."

"leads us nicely to our season sponsor, Sonar. So, let's look at some data. A new report from Sonar, the state of code developer survey report, found that 82% of developers believe they can code faster..."

"get started for free, head to sonarsource.com/pragmatic. With this, let's get back to Peter and how AI agents cannot exactly be trusted. >> Then I had then I added added an MCP so it could use the bro..."

">> I I remember because once on Twitter I sent you a direct message. I was up early for valid reasons, you know, my my kids or something like that. But it was 5:00 a.m. and I I sent you a message on T..."

"mind as like you're a really experienced developer like it's it's not easy to blow your mind, right? Like you you you've seen good code you can differentiate like crap code, decent code, good enough c..."

"think about it? >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. To a degree. Yes. And and even now like I I I mean like my my last blog post was a confession that I I ship code on read and >> yeah we have to talk about that >> ..."

"both Armen and and Mario from Vinner. They got they got AI pill because I I was addictive. You know, my my enem was like confusing them and then they tried it out and then and then eventually they als..."

""Oh, when you write the code, you you feel the friction and that's why that's how you make good architecture." I feel the same friction when I prompt because I I see the code flying by. I see how long..."

"again GBD 5.2 that was again I think it's underrated. I don't know I don't know why why all these people still use cloud code. I I I kind of get it. It's it's a different way of working but whatever O..."

"better because it it it takes 10 times longer. um Claude would read three files and then be confident enough to just like create code and then you really have to steer it and push it so it reads more ..."

">> So so a lot of a lot would you say a lot of your prompting or a good part of it is this conversation where you are pretty much planning together with the agent. >> Yeah. It's like what about like I..."

"architect you It sounds a little bit like you're almost, you know, for years back this this totally came got out of style. But there was this idea that you would have the architect with a capital A wh..."

"difference in this system when when it was in companies it was the architect was kind of shielded from the output of their work because there's so much people and so much process etc. Well, I wouldn't..."

"architecture and designing. I the there's so much inside those monsters um on knowledge and everything is just a question away but you have to know what question to ask. Of course I also built this Tw..."

">> Yeah. But you you need to have like knowledge expertise. >> Yeah. You experience >> you you I mean so so so these are the people who rejected and then the people who who care a bit less about how i..."

">> Yeah. And and interesting now you know you you built kind of software I guess the traditional way you know pre AI for 15 years or even more than 15 years and you got really good at being also leadi..."

"it work. I go back to there and and maybe tweak it a little bit more. But usually just like try it out and maybe then this is ready because this only took like 20 minutes. So like I constantly jump ar..."

"read an image, create an image before and then look into the image and see what it sees. So I I don't not just tell the loop, I still tell tool calling, make it work and then it solved itself. It took..."

"the way how to make things good. Well, then remember back back even before AI for complex systems like once you got someone who built these things before what they started with how do we make it testa..."

"don't write the test I don't write documentation I explain the model the trade-off so like why we did something like this and then tell it like like write that write the entrance section beginner frie..."

"he wrote a prompt as far as I understand it there was there was not a lot of information on the website but to me it sounded like he wrote a prompt he put it on claude web and and he pressed send and ..."

"know how to play guitar and I put you on the piano and you tried a bit. It's like, "Oh, this sucks. I go back to my guitar." No. No. It's like it's it's a different way of building. It's a different w..."

"business that it's a lot of revenue is hinging over it if today you know we just wiped PSPF kit does not exist you need to rebuild PSPDF kit you now have these agents how differently would it look how..."

"work around uh model limitations of of of of Opus that you don't even need when you use Codex. There's there's maybe a few cases where you have a really long list of individual tasks that can be autom..."

"often lack is taste. I have to feel like how does this feature feel and and the beauty now is that features are so easy I can just like throw it away or like reprompt it. My building model is usually ..."

">> Yeah. Yeah. I guess cuz cuz like you know when you're working even if you have like a new grad on the team or an intern you know you give them something they work it for a day or two now you give t..."

"actually will end up being to me this is very much it is very much a circle um until I you don't I don't you don't walk up the mountain like this you go you go around and sometimes you like you you yo..."

"like almost the the anti-orem. It's kind of like the movie Her, but but that's where the technology is going. Those models are really good at understanding text. the the the bigger the context is, the..."

"see like the first things with like OpenAI who who launched pulse with some productivity but we just don't have enough compute yet to offer this as a feature and also it's it's quite difficult. My ide..."

"workflow. But this idea of like this hyper personal agent stuck a little bit and then over the last few months I I really started I built it but finally initially I didn't even had the the scope that ..."

""How the did you do that?" Oh, yeah. You sent me a file and and then I looked at the header and I found that it's OG. So, I used FFmpeg to convert it. And then I I looked for Visper on your computer, ..."

"Like I it was bitching to me and then I I showed it to the the the friends I was with and everybody was like hooked. Like this is something magical and I was hooked too. Um, and then I I I went on Twi..."

"music. >> Why CLIs? Why not why not MCPs? And what do you think about MCPS anyway? >> As a crutch it's it's I think that the the best thing that came out of MCPS is that it made companies reync to ope..."

"discover or decide which one to use. >> That's what that's what companies are building now. But there's still the problem of that I cannot chain them. I cannot I cannot easily build a script that says..."

"demand. Even right now if you use MCP you have to restart cloud code which is like very user unfriendly. So I quietly built up my army to like automate everything which was a lot of work. Uh I think t..."

"craziest blow up from 100 stars to like what 3,300 stars in a week. Um and I think I merged 500 pull requests already. That's why I feel like I even merge button. So, so that that's why that's why I'm..."

"complexity to a degree that it it it feels magical. Well, but yeah, but this is interesting because like I I I can sense from we're talking, you know, you put so much thought into architecting this th..."

"lot lot of small things, right? Like I I feel in software, right? Like we we know for software even before AI there was not much difficult. Of course, you need to learn and understand the language and..."

"like what's his name what's his core emoji what are the things that are like inside jokes and and but it's like evolving documents that it will maintain and like tweak as you interact with it and then..."

"you built this this product and it's now it's a production software you're merging porocas people are using it now thinking back to PSPDF kit and and companies that are like that which which have you ..."

"because I just want to move faster and ultimately they have to deal with the code not me I had I deal with the the overall structure and architecture and I can still do that in the way that I like eve..."

"where that's coming from. Should I run full gate? So now I call it gate with g full gate is like linting and building and and checking and running all the tests. And I almost think it like because it'..."

">> So in this case, I know that Mario who does like shitty coding shitty coding agent which is like a actually very much not shitty coding agent. It's called Pi. I know that he had this plug-in archit..."

"a group that a lot of lot of people are worried about is the the new grads, the the people with with no experience who are either in school or about to graduate because of course you've been an experi..."

"they are not tainted by all the experience like they they they use agents in ways that we don't even think about again because they don't know that it doesn't work and by then it probably does >> and ..."

"code I I ask people to please add the prompts and some do and I I read the prompts more than I read the code because to me this is this is a way higher signal of like how did you get to the solution w..."

"like make sure that your message arrives and that things don't explode. So onboarding was literally like type this prompt into your agent. Um which is would have been mind-blowing even a year ago. >> ..."

"bought the iPhone 17. I still haven't unpacked it because I just in my head I wanted it but then I couldn't get around to it because it's just a hassle to like move the Sims around and I said like bas..."

">> I I'm having I'm having a blast. >> Love it. This is great, Pete. Thanks very much. Well, this was a super interesting conversation and it feels to me that how one person teams built software with ..."