This week I’m talking with Adam Jacob, founder of System Initiative and creator of Swamp, about what happens when AI agents change the entire shape of software development. We discuss how he went from an 18-person team down to five and shipped Swamp 900 times in four weeks, why he brought User Acceptance Testing (UAT) testing back from the 90s, why software architecture (and domain-driven design) suddenly matters more than knowing how to write code, the live demo where I pointed Swamp at my Proxmox box and watched it write its own automation (blew my mind!!), and why he’ll never accept a pull request to Swamp, ever.

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Sponsors:

• Coder.com – Secure environments where devs and agents work in parallel. Open by design. Secure by default.
• Tailscale – Adam loves Tailscale! Easy, secure, identity-based access to anything. Tailscale deploys quickly and enables Zero Trust access to any resource on your network. From CI/CD runners across multi-cloud environments, to SaaS tools and infrastructure, Tailscale connects it all, seamlessly.
• RWX – CI/CD platform for high velocity teams. When agents help developers write code in minutes, validation becomes your bottleneck. RWX gives agents programmatic control, sub-second cached builds, and semantic outputs they can act on. No commit required. Just iterate until CI passes, then push.
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Featuring:

• Adam Jacob – Website, GitHub, X
• Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

Featured

• Swamp Club
• Swamp manual
• Swamp extensions
• Swamp leaderboard
• Swamp on GitHub
• Swamp extensions on GitHub
• System Initiative
• System Initiative on GitHub

AI coding tools

• Claude Code
• Claude Code docs
• OpenAI Codex CLI
• Codex on GitHub

Infrastructure and automation

• Chef Infra
• Proxmox VE
• QEMU
• Grafana
• Honeycomb
• Better Auth
• TypeScript
• Talos Linux
• Ubiquiti
• DigitalOcean
• Hetzner Cloud
• Amazon S3
• Incus
• Kubernetes

Developer platforms and companies

• GitHub
• GitLab
• Block

Related Changelog episodes

• Rebuilding DevOps from the ground up
• From Chef to System Initiative
• From Chef to System Initiative (remastered)
• The war for the soul of open source
• OSCON

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Adam and Jerod get into the news, Jerod officially retires from the pod (and Changelog), plus a bonus for our Changelog++ subs!

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Sponsors:

• Augment Code – Adam loves “Auggie” – Augment Code’s CLI that brings Augment’s context engine and powerful AI reasoning anywhere your code goes. From building alongside you in the terminal to any part of your development workflow.
• Squarespace – Turn your expertise into a business with the all-in-one platform for websites, services, and getting paid. Use code CHANGELOG to save 10% on your first website purchase.
• Notion – Custom Agents that automate the busywork so your team can focus on real work. Try them free at notion.com/changelog

Featuring:

• Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
• Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

• Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI - Ladybird
• The JavaScript Oxidation Compiler
• Become an Oxc Sponsor | The JavaScript Oxidation Compiler
• Boshen (@boshen_c) / X
• Am I the only one who genuinely prefers on-prem? : r/devops
• The Software Development Lifecycle Is Dead | Boris Tane
• THE 2028 GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE CRISIS
• Anish Acharya on X: “a different way this could go down…”
• The Mythical Agent-Month – Wes McKinney
• NanoClaw - Secure AI Agent for WhatsApp, Telegram & More
• Zed — Agent Client Protocol

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Our ol’ friend, Brett Cannon, is back to talk all things Python. But first! Star Wars, Machete Order, Lost, Babylon 5, Game of Thrones, Murderbot, Ted Lasso, Project Hail Mary, David Attenborough, perpetual voice rights, and the AI uncanny valley.

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Sponsors:

• Namespace – Speed up your development and testing workflows using your existing tools. (Much) faster GitHub actions, Docker builds, and more. At an unbeatable price.
• Tiger Data – Postgres for Developers, devices, and agents The data platform trusted by hundreds of thousands from IoT to Web3 to AI and more.
• Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps close to your users — global Anycast load-balancing, zero-configuration private networking, hardware isolation, and instant WireGuard VPN connections. Push-button deployments that scale to thousands of instances. Check out the speedrun to get started in minutes.

Featuring:

• Brett Cannon – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Mastodon
• Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
• Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

• What is the Star Wars Machete Order?
• Pep 665 (lock file format)
• python-build-standalone
• Astral: high-performance Python tooling
• Pypi: Page Not Found
• Incus documentation
• Python/prebuilt-cpython

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Amal Hussein returns to tell us all about her new role at Istari, what life is like outside the web browser, how she’s helping ambitious orgs in aerospace, what the SDLC looks like in 2026, and a whole lot more. Wait, moon vacuums?!

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Sponsors:

• Tiger Data – Postgres for Developers, devices, and agents The data platform trusted by hundreds of thousands from IoT to Web3 to AI and more.
• Namespace – Speed up your development and testing workflows using your existing tools. (Much) faster GitHub actions, Docker builds, and more. At an unbeatable price.
• NordLayer – Toggle-ready network security for modern businesses. Get an exclusive offer: up to 22% off NordLayer yearly plans plus 10% on top with the coupon code changelog-10-NORDLAYER. Try it risk-free with a 14-day money-back guarantee at nordlayer.com/thechangelog

Featuring:

• Amal Hussein – GitHub, X
• Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
• Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

• Istari: level the digital playing field
• AWS Re:invent keynote Blue Origin
• Frictionless book
• Jevons paradox

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

We discuss the buzz around Clawdbot / MoltBot / OpenClaw, how app subscriptions are turning into weekend hacking projects, why SaaS stocks are crashing on Wall Street, and what it all means.

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Sponsors:

• Tiger Data – Postgres for Developers, devices, and agents The data platform trusted by hundreds of thousands from IoT to Web3 to AI and more.
• Namespace – Speed up your development and testing workflows using your existing tools. (Much) faster GitHub actions, Docker builds, and more. At an unbeatable price.
• Squarespace – A website makes it real! Use code CHANGELOG to save 10% on your first website purchase.

Featuring:

• Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
• Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

• OpenClaw — personal AI assistant
• Mintlify
• Macrumors Buyer’s Guide: Mac Mini
• Your app subscription is now my weekend project
• The future of software engineering is SRE
• Why SaaS stocks are crashing on Wall Street

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Techno Tim joins Adam to dive deep into the state of homelab’ing in 2026. Hardware is scarce and expensive due to the AI gold rush, but software has never been better. From unleashing Claude on your UDM Pro to building custom Proxmox CLIs, they explores how AI is transforming what’s possible in the homelab. Tim declares 2026 the “Year of Self-Hosted Software” while Adam reveals his homelab’s secret weapons: DNSHole (a Pi-hole replacement written in Rust) and PXM (a Proxmox automation CLI).

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Sponsors:

• Depot – 10x faster builds? Yes please. Build faster. Waste less time. Accelerate Docker image builds, and GitHub Actions workflows. Easily integrate with your existing CI provider and dev workflows to save hours of build time.
• Tiger Data – Postgres for Developers, devices, and agents The data platform trusted by hundreds of thousands from IoT to Web3 to AI and more.
• Notion – Notion is a place where any team can write, plan, organize, and rediscover the joy of play. It’s a workspace designed not just for making progress, but getting inspired. Notion is for everyone — whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or freelance designer, starting a new startup or a student juggling classes and clubs.
• Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps close to your users — global Anycast load-balancing, zero-configuration private networking, hardware isolation, and instant WireGuard VPN connections. Push-button deployments that scale to thousands of instances. Check out the speedrun to get started in minutes.

Featuring:

• Techno Tim – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
• Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

People

• Techno Tim - Tim Stewart’s website, YouTube channel, and documentation hub
• Crosstalk Solutions - Chris’s channel, mentioned for building custom Ubiquiti API tools

Virtualization & Infrastructure

• Proxmox VE - Open-source virtualization platform for VMs and containers
• TrueNAS - Enterprise-grade open-source storage operating system built on ZFS
• HexOS - Consumer-friendly NAS OS built on TrueNAS (in development)
• Proxmox VE Helper Scripts - Community-maintained scripts for easy LXC and VM deployment

Self-Hosted Software

• Paperless-NGX - Self-hosted document management system with OCR
• Paperless-GPT - AI-powered enhancement for Paperless-NGX using LLMs
• Ollama - Run large language models locally on your own hardware
• Open WebUI - Self-hosted web interface for interacting with local LLMs
• Plex - Media server for organizing and streaming your personal media library
• Home Assistant - Open-source home automation platform
• Pi-hole - Network-wide ad blocking via DNS filtering

Document Intelligence & RAG

• Dockling - IBM’s open-source document parsing library for AI/RAG pipelines
• PaddleOCR - Multi-language OCR toolkit for document recognition

AI & Agents

• Claude - Anthropic’s AI assistant, used for homelab automation in this episode
• OpenCode - Open-source AI coding agent (mentioned as potential homelab tool)
• Model Context Protocol (MCP) - Protocol for connecting AI models to external tools and data

Networking

• Ubiquiti - Enterprise networking gear popular with homelabbers (UDM Pro, UniFi)
• Tailscale - Zero-config VPN for secure networking between devices

Container & Orchestration

• Docker - Container platform for packaging and running applications
• Kubernetes - Container orchestration for managing containerized workloads
• Fly.io - Platform for running containers close to users globally

Monitoring & Observability

• Grafana - Open-source analytics and visualization platform
• Prometheus - Open-source monitoring and alerting toolkit

Security & Authentication

• Bitwarden - Open-source password manager (self-hostable)
• Authelia - Open-source authentication and authorization server

Databases

• MariaDB - Community-developed fork of MySQL
• Redis - In-memory data store for caching and messaging
• PostgreSQL - Advanced open-source relational database

Hardware Mentioned

• Intel Optane - Ultra-low latency storage drives (discontinued but prized for ZFS special vdevs)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 - GPU used for Plex transcoding and local AI inference

Concepts & Techniques

• ZFS Special Vdevs - ZFS feature for accelerating metadata and small file operations
• PCIe Bifurcation - Splitting a PCIe slot to support multiple NVMe drives
• Medallion Architecture - Bronze/Silver/Gold data lake pattern discussed for document ETL

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Gerhard is back for Kaizen 22! We’re diving deep into those pesky out-of-memory errors, analyzing our new Pipedream instance status checker, and trying to figure out why someone in Asia downloads a single episode so much.

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Sponsors:

• Namespace – Speed up your development and testing workflows using your existing tools. (Much) faster GitHub actions, Docker builds, and more. At an unbeatable price.
• Depot – 10x faster builds? Yes please. Build faster. Waste less time. Accelerate Docker image builds, and GitHub Actions workflows. Easily integrate with your existing CI provider and dev workflows to save hours of build time.
• Squarespace – A website makes it real! Use code CHANGELOG to save 10% on your first website purchase.

Featuring:

• Gerhard Lazu – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
• Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

• Kaizen 22 discussion #554
• Tw93/mole: 🐹 deep clean and optimize your mac.
• Stuff Goes Bad: Erlang in Anger
• Abacus.ai - the world’s first super assistant for professionals and enterprises

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Mat Ryer is back and he brought his impromptu musical abilities with him! We discuss Rob Pike vs thankful AI, Microsoft’s GitHub monopoly (and what it means for open source), and Tom Tunguz’ 12 predictions for 2026: agent-first design, the rise of vector databases, and are we about to pay more for AI than people?!

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Sponsors:

• Namespace – Speed up your development and testing workflows using your existing tools. (Much) faster GitHub actions, Docker builds, and more. At an unbeatable price.
• Notion – Notion is a place where any team can write, plan, organize, and rediscover the joy of play. It’s a workspace designed not just for making progress, but getting inspired. Notion is for everyone — whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or freelance designer, starting a new startup or a student juggling classes and clubs.
• Squarespace – A website makes it real! Use code CHANGELOG to save 10% on your first website purchase.

Featuring:

• Mat Ryer – GitHub, LinkedIn, Bluesky, X
• Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
• Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

• How Rob Pike got spammed with an AI slop “act of kindness”
• How GitHub monopoly is destroying the open source ecosystem
• 12 predictions for 2026

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Our 8th annual year-end wrap-up is here! We’re featuring 8 listener voicemails, dope Breakmaster Cylinder remixes & our favorite episodes of the year. Thanks for listening! 💚

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Sponsors:

• Depot – 10x faster builds? Yes please. Build faster. Waste less time. Accelerate Docker image builds, and GitHub Actions workflows. Easily integrate with your existing CI provider and dev workflows to save hours of build time.
• Augment Code – Adam loves “Auggie” – Augment Code’s CLI that brings Augment’s context engine and powerful AI reasoning anywhere your code goes. From building alongside you in the terminal to any part of your development workflow.
• Framer – Design and publish in one place. Get started free at framer.com/design, code CHANGELOG for a free month of Pro. Rules and restrictions may apply.

Featuring:

• Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
• Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

Andrew Patton’s favs:

• It’s a peccadillo circus (Friends #75)
• Hello, Matworld! (Friends #90)
• Kaizen! Pipely is LIVE (Friends #105)
• The 1000x faster financial database (Interviews #635)
• Adventures in babysitting coding agents (Friends #96)
• Agentic infra changes everything (Interviews #664)
• Changelog Beats by Breakmaster Cylinder
• Vibing into the vibe (Friends #89)
• Try harder. Ultrathink! (Friends #102)
• Very important agents (Friends #120)

Brett Cannon’s favs:

• The power of the button (Interviews #623)
• The 1000x faster financial database (Interviews #635)
• Build software that lasts! (Interviews #627)
• wsl.exe – cat hello.cs (Friends #95)

Don MacKinnon’s favs:

• Turso is rewriting SQLite in Rust (Interviews #626)

Fernando Bevilacqua’s favs:

• Flowing with agents (Interviews #658)
• Reaching industrial economies of scale (Interviews #632)
• Solving the AI energy crisis (Interviews #652)

Jamie Tanna’s favs:

• npm under siege (what to do about it) (Friends #111)
• There will be bleeps (Friends #113)
• The world of open source metadata (Interviews #665)
• Of agents & agency (Friends #86)
• Over the top auth strategies (Friends #78)
• It’s a peccadillo circus (Friends #75)
• Hello, Matworld! (Friends #90)
• Change my mind (Friends #81)
• DO repeat yourself! (Interviews #666)
• Programming with LLMs (Interviews #629)
• Vibing into the vibe (Friends #89)
• Try harder. Ultrathink! (Friends #102)
• Very important agents (Friends #120)
• Agentic infra changes everything (Interviews #664)
• Adventures in babysitting coding agents (Friends #96)
• Agent, take the wheel (Interviews #648)

Jarvis Yang’s favs:

• changelog.news
• Minnebar 20

Nabeel Sulieman’s favs:

• Kaizen! Pipely is LIVE (Friends #105)

Jerod’s favs:

• From open source to acquired (Interviews #625)
• Discovering discovery coding(Friends #80)
• #define: I’m going pants (Friends #93)
• LIVE from Denver with Nora Jones! (Interviews #653)
• Inside Oxide (Friends #110)
• Autonomous drone delivery in a Zip (Interviews #670)

Adam’s favs:

• Turn him into a walrus (Friends #87)
• Adventures in babysitting coding agents (Friends #96)
• Chasing that next BIG thing (Interviews #639)
• Inside Oxide (Friends #110)
• Reinventing Python tooling (Interviews #660)
• Werner Vogels predicts the future (Interviews #669)
• LIVE from Denver with Nora Jones! (Interviews #653)
• The state of homelab tech (2025) (Friends #79)

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Alex Kretzschmar joins Adam for a trip down the Linux rabbit hole – Docker vs Podman, building a Kubernetes cluster, ZFS backups with zfs.rent, bootc, favorite Linux distros, new homelab tools built with AI, self-hosting Immich, content creation, Plex and Jellyfin, the future of piracy and more.

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Changelog++ members save 10 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!

Sponsors:

• Tiger Data – Postgres for Developers, devices, and agents The data platform trusted by hundreds of thousands from IoT to Web3 to AI and more.
• Depot – 10x faster builds? Yes please. Build faster. Waste less time. Accelerate Docker image builds, and GitHub Actions workflows. Easily integrate with your existing CI provider and dev workflows to save hours of build time.
• Augment Code – Adam loves “Auggie” – Augment Code’s CLI that brings Augment’s context engine and powerful AI reasoning anywhere your code goes. From building alongside you in the terminal to any part of your development workflow.
• Framer – Design and publish in one place. Get started free at framer.com/design, code CHANGELOG for a free month of Pro.

Featuring:

• Alex Kretzschmar – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
• Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

• Tailscale YouTube
• Docker
• Podman
• Kubernetes
• zfs.rent
• bootc
• Immich
• Plex
• Jellyfin

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Nick Nisi joins us to dig into the latest trends from this year and how they’re impacting his day-to-day coding and Vision Pro wearing. Anthropic’s acquisition of Bun, the evolving JavaScript and AI landscape, GitHub’s challenges and the Amp/Sourcegraph split. We dive into AI development practices, context management, voice assistants, Home Assistant OS and home automation, the state of the AI browser war, and we close with a prediction from Nick.

Join the discussion

Changelog++ members get a bonus 10 minutes at the end of this episode and zero ads. Join today!

Sponsors:

• Tiger Data – Postgres for Developers, devices, and agents The data platform trusted by hundreds of thousands from IoT to Web3 to AI and more.
• Namespace – Speed up your development and testing workflows using your existing tools. (Much) faster GitHub actions, Docker builds, and more. At an unbeatable price.
• Notion – Notion is a place where any team can write, plan, organize, and rediscover the joy of play. It’s a workspace designed not just for making progress, but getting inspired. Notion is for everyone — whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or freelance designer, starting a new startup or a student juggling classes and clubs.
• NordLayer – Protect your business with NordLayer, the toggle-ready network security platform built for modern teams. VPN, access control, and threat protection—no hardware or complex setup required. Get 28% off NordLayer yearly plans this Black Friday with code changelog-28 at nordlayer.com/thechangelog

Featuring:

• Nick Nisi – Website, GitHub, Bluesky, Mastodon, X
• Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
• Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

• Apple Vision Pro upgraded with M5 chip and Dual Knit Band
• Bun is joining Anthropic
• Anthropic acquires Bun as Claude Code reaches $1B milestone
• Amp, Inc.
• The Browser Company explains why it stopped developing Arc
• Letter to Arc members 2025
• The Browser Company launches Dia in beta
• Home Assistant 2025.12: Triggering the holidays
• Home Assistant Green
• Migrating from GitHub to Codeberg

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!