SQLite

Why Eval++ Is the Next Great Compute Primitive — Sunil Pai & Matt Carey, Cloudflare

Jun 8, 2026 · 24:51

Matt Carey and Sunil Pai from Cloudflare's agents team argue that Durable Objects — stateful serverless with 15ms London latency — and Dynamic Workers — a safe, sandboxed eval for LLM-generated code — form the next compute primitive for AI agents. They explain how Durable Objects enable resumable streaming, multi-tab sync, and background scheduling out of the box without distributed systems engineering. Dynamic Workers allow running generated JavaScript strings in isolated sandboxes, reclaiming 30 years of avoided eval. The pair tease upcoming talks: one on collapsing Cloudflare's 2,600 API endpoints into a 1,000-token MCP tool, and another on a coding agent harness built entirely on Workers that they are already shipping.

Vibe Engineering Effect Apps — Michael Arnaldi, Effectful

May 7, 2026 · 1:43:04

Michael Arnaldi demonstrates that cloning the Effect library's repository into a project, rather than relying on prompts, is the most effective way to give coding agents the context they need to build reliably with Effect. Starting from an empty repo, he sets up a Bun, Vitest, and TypeScript project, adds the Effect repo as a git subtree, and creates an agents.md to guide the agent. He then uses the agent to research patterns, resulting in a fully functional Todo HTTP API with OpenAPI docs, SQLite persistence, and tests — all from scratch in under two hours. The workshop stresses that treating the library code as part of the project, combined with strict diagnostics and pattern files, makes agents effective even in unfamiliar codebases. Arnaldi also discusses the importance of workflow systems like Effect Cluster for long-running AI processes, where server failures become likely.

Full Walkthrough: Workflow for AI Coding — Matt Pocock

Apr 24, 2026 · 1:36:30

Matt Pocock presents a hands-on workshop on building a full AI-assisted coding workflow, arguing that software engineering fundamentals—not hype—make agents effective. He introduces the 'smart zone' and 'dumb zone' of LLMs (performance drops after ~100k tokens) and the 'Memento problem' (agents forget between sessions). His process starts with a 'Grill Me' skill that relentlessly questions the user until shared understanding is reached, then produces a PRD without reading it, slices work into vertical 'tracer bullet' issues, and runs agents AFK using TDD. He advocates designing codebases with deep, testable modules and shows Sandcastle, a TypeScript library for parallel agent execution with separate implementer (Sonnet) and reviewer (Opus). The workshop transforms ambiguous briefs into shippable features while keeping humans in the loop for QA and taste.

Building Code First AI Agents with Azure AI Agent Service — Cedric Vidal, Microsoft

Jun 27, 2025 · 1:54:06

Cedric Vidal, Principal AI Advocate at Microsoft, demonstrates building code-first AI agents with Azure AI Agent Service, using function calling, code interpreter, file search, and Bing grounding for a sales analysis use case. He creates a conversational agent that queries SQLite, generates pie charts from Python code, and blends product PDF data with relational data. The workshop explains stateful agents, tool routing (LLM generates JSON to call functions), and the limits of single-step agents versus multi-agent orchestration with AutoGen. Cedric addresses when to use Agent Service (managed persistence and tools) versus raw LLM endpoints, and covers MCP servers as a tool lifecycle manager. Key insights include using instructions to ground agent behavior and the need for eval frameworks for agent quality.

MCPs are Boring (or: Why we are losing the Sparkle of LLMs) - Manuel Odendahl

Jun 10, 2025 · 28:32

Manuel Odendahl argues that MCPs (Model Context Protocols) are boring because they constrain LLMs to rigid, predefined tool calls, while LLMs truly shine as code generators that can create dynamic tools on the fly. He critiques the inefficiency of tool calling—repeating context, wasting tokens, and struggling with many tools—and advocates for an 'Eval' approach where the LLM writes and executes code (e.g., SQL, JavaScript) to solve tasks directly. Demonstrating with a JavaScript sandbox, he shows how a single Eval tool can introspect databases, write queries, create REST APIs, and even build a full CRM interface in one call, saving time and tokens. Odendahl urges engineers to think recursively: ask the LLM to write code that writes more code, unlocking infinite loops of creation and restoring the sparkle of LLMs beyond boring function calls.

Open Questions for AI Engineering: Simon Willison

Nov 25, 2023 · 24:33

Simon Willison recaps the AI industry's past year—from ChatGPT's breakthrough to open-source local models—and poses key open questions for AI engineering. He argues that ChatGPT's chat interface, while popular, is a poor fit for advanced use, urging better UIs like his command-line tool LLM. He celebrates Meta's Llama release as a 'stable diffusion moment' for language models and highlights the rise of small, locally-run models such as Replit's 3B model, asking how small models can remain useful. On security, he warns that prompt injection remains unsolved after 13 months, limiting what can safely be built. He champions ChatGPT's Code Interpreter (which he dubs 'Coding Intern') as the most exciting tool, able to write and compile C code on a phone, and argues that LLMs flatten the learning curve, making programming accessible to more people. He concludes by urging the community to build tools that enable anyone to automate tedious tasks.