MOTS Extra: Leaving Parties to Check on AI Agents

In today's MOTS extra I sat down with @tejasybhakta of @morphllm to get a little technical.
We covered:
- programming with a piano foot pedal
- leaving parties to check on agents
- how many agents good engineers are actually running

Watch on X; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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Transcript

react is solved

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So you're listening to a very special edition of Members of Technical Star. I actually say that every single time. So unfortunately, I've completely diminished the meaning of whatever the fuck that means. But basically, I am here with Morph LLM's Tages. How are you doing, Tagis? Very good. Very good. Cool. Alright, moving on. So basically, today we're gonna be talking about uh essentially this man's setup because actually uh what we have not had as much of on members of technical staff are actual uh people that are pretty technical. And so, and so you know, it's an old shocker, like it's like like yeah, I mean I I I I spent a couple of years like just doing like JavaScript slop code, but you know, whether that's considered technical anymore, uh I don't know. I think Claude Code Codex can pretty much one-shot a bunch of that. Although I must say, I did try and change the global styles on my company website the other day, and Codex couldn't one-shot it. Wow. Kind of concerning, kind of concerning. It actually did a really terrible job. It only needed to touch one file and it just, you know, globals.css. It's like, hmm. Anyway.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

You're trying to get me to rage break the React Miami people right now? Yes. React is solved. React is solved. No point in doing it. That's they should just rename it to Coding Agents Miami.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

Coding Agents Miami. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But basically, so this is how actual members of technical staff write software in 2026. Because I consider Tajus to be one. I mean, if he wasn't building Morph, he'd probably be one. And he's not gonna tell you that. I can because I just glaze. Glaze the fuck out of the guests and sponsors and all of those sorts of things. Um, this is not neutral journalism, this is sycophantic, you know, sycophantic journalism, and we're okay with this. So I think um a cool place to start is how has somebody like yours's workflow changed, right? Because you did like you were at SpaceX. I was at Tesla before. Oh, Tesla. Tesla. Fucking they're all the same, dude.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

I mean, I mean, I mean with with all of the last mergers, I mean, they're probably gonna be this Tesla just invested two billion, right? So Tesla might literally be.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Tesla is a space company. You're just early. You're not wrong. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just like Cursor is a space company. Yeah, exactly. It's SpaceX, XAI, Cursor. Of course, of course, when Tesla. So yeah, so you're at Tesla. Um, you know, thinking even in just the last year, how has the how has the workflow for a cracked

running agents in parallel is the meta

SPEAKER_00 2:14

software engineer even changed? It's a trick question.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

I mean, honestly, like I feel like it's gone super parallel. Like I've do like a ton of parallel cloud codes now, whereas like a year ago, I think that was what, that was like cloud four, cloud three, five. Yeah. Mostly like mainlining one or two tasks at the same time. A cursor just released like multiple tabs. Cloud code was still like not super big at the time. Uh yeah, I think that's been the biggest shift is like doing stuff in parallel. Yeah. While stuff is planning, while stuff is coding. Uh some people swear, like, oh, this is like a middle of the bell curve shit. Like you should just like if you're on the one end, you're doing the the one task, the middle of the bell curve's trying to do like eight parallel tasks, and the the smartest people would also do one. Maybe I'm just a mid-brain, but I I I I'm like full on like all parallel. Like I I really I think you can write really good code. Like, I definitely write, I think I write still write really good code. Yeah. Um again, it's much harder. It's very easy to just like be like, oh, I'm gonna do parallel, I'm just gonna slop it up everywhere, but like hand build a business on that. It's like not maintainable. Yeah. Uh so that's when the biggest

how many agents are you running?

SPEAKER_01 3:15

shift is like personally, I still am very bullish on like pushing the bounds of parallelism. Like the open plot guy, he he's doing more than I am. Like, I'm doing like I'm doing like eight max and he's going like 12, 15. Uh he's he I I mean I I've tried to like dig into his setup. He does like the ultra wide. That was when one I did. Yes. I got rid of my monitor and did it ultra wide. That definitely helped. Yeah. Um, but yeah, and then again, like you were saying, my my foot pedal is sort of my my novel contribution to yes.

SPEAKER_00 3:41

Well, we can we can actually get into this because I think it is I think it will be useful for people to actually um see what such a setup even looks like and how somebody can even direct multiple agents. Because honestly, you know, I was pretty cynical about the whole thing. Even, you know, obviously I'm not I'm not writing much code anymore. Uh when I do, I'm running one agent and I'm going off and like brushing my teeth or something. Uh but like, you know, I I mean it's still to me like I'm still going back and checking stuff, but yeah, you've got you've got a foot

coding with a foot pedal

SPEAKER_00 4:10

pedal to direct your agents.

SPEAKER_01 4:11

Uh so it's it's just for whisper flow. So like uh my whole thing was like I was like, ah, I'm using a whole hand for whisper flow. Just press the FN button.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

That's just like a like that hand could be doing like very useful things.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

Totally, like writing the next prompt.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

Uh or just like navigating to the right page, navigating to the right agents. Like if you're doing like control arrow or like it's like your hand is very like can do a lot of semantic stuff. Yes, yes. Whereas like the one button press, you just move to something that's like ape-like, like your foot.

SPEAKER_00 4:36

Totally, totally.

SPEAKER_01 4:37

And so that that that that that helped a bunch, I think. I think uh Whisper Flow alone was like a 30% boost, the pedal was another 20% boost, ultra wide is another 20%. Wow. I'm I'm the I'm the middle of the bell curve maxing. I'm just um I'm mid-brain maxing, but I I really like it. I think it does really well.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

Yeah, interesting, interesting. Yeah, I've I've um I've only spun up that many agents as a joke on Primogen stream before. Yeah. Uh and like basically the idea was for the bit, we actually were basically like, you know, uh, we were we were just opening so many different open code terminals and then essentially being like, hey, open code spin up more agents. And so the idea was to actually, you know, as a joke, not ever get the code to compile. But uh, you know, the idea that we just need to add more agents and it was actually solve our problems. Uh turns out you can actually

leaving the party to check on agents

SPEAKER_00 5:25

do that. You left a par you left a party yesterday to do that, no?

SPEAKER_01 5:28

Uh I guess I didn't leave the party. I did go into Dax's house at the time. I mean I had an outage, okay? So I feel like I get a pass because I got like alerted for an outage on a solar founder, no one else is gonna fix it. So I had to be me. Yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

And this was this was not at React Miami, was this at AIE or React Miami?

SPEAKER_01 5:47

Uh it was like Dax's party is again between the two. Okay, yes. A engineer's ending, and so my flight was.

SPEAKER_00 5:52

Maybe I should have gone. I had an open invite, I had a hotel room, uh, and my like fucking like stay-at-home podcaster ass just was just like, nah, I can't be stuffed.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

Theo was podcasting there.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

I know, I know. He has way more grindset than I do. Um, you know, that's why that's why he's really big and I'm not. Is what it is, is what it is.

claude models

SPEAKER_00 6:15

Um speaking of Theo, actually, uh obviously we've seen a lot of like his uh his like clawed fallout, his anthropic fallout. Now, his reasoning, of course, for a lot of this stuff is that well, I mean, he he he he really likes OpenAI because they treat him well. Um, you know, I I tend to be the same way. I tend to be the same way. I like it when people are nice to me, actually. And it's like if I have a problem and then reach out, fucking hey, you heard it here first. Uh but basically um, you know, he's been seeing all having all of these issues with the Clawed models, of course. There's been a lot of discourse on the timeline about the Claude models. I'd say I I figured you use all the models basically all the time. I do. What are your thoughts on the idea that Claude has gotten dumber? I think we've actually kind of seen verifiable proof that this has been the case today.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Yeah, I mean uh people have just like measured the number of thinking tokens. Yeah. Uh someone did like prompt detection to get what the Claude thing is, and they have like that XML tag for reasoning effort being 0.2 abstract, hard-coded, no matter what you specify. Uh so yeah, I mean it has been proven. I mean, I think the compute scarcity crisis is like real. Yeah. Uh and I don't know if I shouldn't really knock it. I mean, it's more of like a they have so many classes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you don't have to. And it seems like everyone would be mad at any of those things happening.

SPEAKER_00 7:31

Yep. Yep, yep. And I and and as of I should I should note, as of time of recording, this is the 23rd of April, so we actually did see some data come out today, and this is also the release of 5.5 today, right? GPT 5.5. And so yeah, one of those things. I mean, that pendulum keeps swinging back and forth, but uh, you know, we as uh uh lonely little startup founders will simply just use the best tools at all times. Yeah. Who would have fucking talked? Members of the permanent underclass. Yeah, I'm gonna rename the show. Members of yeah, yeah, it's gonna be it's gonna be uh yeah, yeah, mop. It's just gonna be mop, actually. Yeah, we're bringing back mop, dude. Uh perfect. You know what? I think this is a good time, because we kind of covered all the things that I wanted to cover. I think this is a good time to actually go check out your setup. You down for this? Sure. Cool.

checking out the setup

SPEAKER_00 8:17

And what we're actually gonna do is we're just gonna check out the setup of a cracked engineer. I don't know about that. Oh yeah? Well, I mean, like, all I can see, I can see the foot pedal. I've I can't say that I've ever coded with a foot pedal.

SPEAKER_01 8:33

It's good. It's good. Everyone's gonna be on this in like one year. Oh yeah? No, not this though. This one's stupid. This is like uh for like sewing machines and musicians to like.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

I was gonna say, it looks like it looks like the the foot pedal that I have for my keyboard. Yeah, yeah. You can do like page training with it, right? Uh well that and just sustain pedal. So for my keyboard, I have yeah, you just have like the sustain pedal like you would on any piano. Okay, I see. Hopefully I'm not um leaking any production secrets, but it also doesn't matter. I'll blur I'll blur it out. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

Yeah, so I mean basically it becomes 11 p.m. at night, there's no notifications, and you get into the zone, and then I do I do like my foot pedals. And so like it's not worth the finger, the finger, right? Because the finger you have to press FN. Yeah. Foot pedal, you just do this, and you have whisper going.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

Oh, I see. Yeah, so so the foot pedal is the whisper flow trigger.

SPEAKER_01 9:17

Yeah. And then when your girlfriend's asleep, you plug in that mic. And then so you can just go talk really quietly and it works.

SPEAKER_00 9:25

Wait, can you can you give an example of a of a prompt?

SPEAKER_01 9:28

Yeah, let's see. Uh we just want a reel?

SPEAKER_00 9:31

Oh, let's go. Do you want me to whisper?

SPEAKER_01 9:36

Uh I do whispering really quietly because I'm gonna cut my girlfriend over here.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

Honestly, I think I think um I think the mic should actually pick it up. Oh, okay. So so you can whisper if you want.

SPEAKER_01 9:53

That's pretty good. So I said investigate the auto-scaling logic and simulator on the past two weeks of data. And so like you can imagine, like, if you're doing last clicks with your hand, you can go through like six or seven of these really fast.

SPEAKER_00 10:05

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:07

Dude, that's that's swap windows, well, swap tabs.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

And you're still in VS Code? Uh no, this is cursor.

SPEAKER_01 10:12

Okay. So when I do ML code, I do it in cursor, otherwise everything else is in iTerm 2 for cloud code.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

Yeah, it makes sense. Makes sense. I I am also in iTerm 2. Uh except with codecs at the moment, so. Ooh.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

Paid advertisement. Paid advertisement.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

Well, pfft. I mean. Not yet. I'm not TVPN dude. I mean, I mean Anthropic, Anthropic needs to acquire me, so. Okay, cracked. This is cracked.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

Fourth end of the season does this. Those are the only two options.

SPEAKER_00 10:37

I mean, don't mind if we do. I mean, I don't know. Look, I mean I've already managed to get uh Sequoia to change the names. I feel like I have a bit more power than I would have thought.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

Uh well, because you have the mob, the mobs with you.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

That's right, I've got the Twitter mob.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:50

I've got like 15 friends, uh, which are actually the 15 listeners of the show, uh, that are just very, very they're like a very high-intent audience and they have a lot of followers. So I can basically take down anybody. Um anyway, this is this is the setup of a cracked engineer and not sponsor. So this is my words. This is my words. So go check out morphlm.com, uh, Tejas from Morflm.com. Anything else you want to you want to say in order to pitch morph LLM.com? You don't have to.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

Um don't use Morph. It's not good. Uh just fucking broken. Just fuck off. Don't don't don't don't don't look at our website.

SPEAKER_00 11:30

See, this is this is the kind this is the new style advertising that we actually do on mock.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Yeah, I learned it from Dax, actually. He just does open coded shit all the time and it works for him. So morph is shit, never use morph. Uh that's my pitch. Okay, you see.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

All right. Well, you heard it here first. Uh, don't use Morph, it fucking sucks. Um, you've been listening to another uh, well, I mean, special episode of Members of Technical Stuff. We'll go ahead and see you on the timeline again real soon.