Modern Web

Rob Ocel sits down with Minko Gechev to unpack one of the fastest-evolving areas in AI-assisted development: skills, agent workflows, and the growing complexity of AI harnesses.Explore AI skills, how they differ from rules and MCPs, and why developers are increasingly treating skills as structured, executable instructions rather than traditional documentation. Minko explains how modern agents operate under the hood, how skills are lazy-loaded into context windows, and why poorly designed skills can create context rot, unnecessary token usage, and degraded performance over time.
Rob and Minko also dig into one of the most important but misunderstood topics in AI engineering today: evals. They break down how teams can evaluate AI workflows, measure pass rates, test deterministic versus non-deterministic outputs, and optimize skills for reliability, token efficiency, and execution quality across evolving models and harnesses. Also learn about prompt structure, workflow orchestration, context compression, state-machine agents, React loops, and why many teams are accumulating rules and skills faster than they are pruning them.

What you will learn:
• Learn how engineering teams are moving AI beyond isolated experiments into repeatable workflows
• Explore strategies for improving reliability, testing, and validation in AI-assisted development
• Hear practical approaches to scaling AI adoption across engineering organizations
• Understand how leaders are thinking about automation, CI/CD, and operational maturity in the age of AI
• Connect with technology leaders discussing the challenges and opportunities shaping modern software delivery

Rob Ocel on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robocel/
Minko Gechev on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mgechev/
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In this episode of the Modern Web Podcast, Rob Ocel talks with PlanetScale CEO Sam Lambert about what “database scale” actually looks like in 2026. Sam shares migration stories from companies that moved at the perfect time and others that waited until they were already in trouble, plus why sharding and reliability are never just “magic” if your queries and data model are a mess.
They also cover PlanetScale’s evolution beyond its MySQL and Vitess roots into Postgres, Metal, and what’s coming next for sharding in the Postgres world. Along the way, they connect the dots to AI workloads, which are increasingly write heavy and put new pressure on performance, uptime, and security.

What You'll Learn:
- How to spot the “right time” to migrate databases before you’re on fire (and what happens when you wait too long)
- What PlanetScale actually gives you “for free” at scale, and what it can’t fix (bad schema, missing indexes, terrible SQL)
- Why “auto” database magic is usually a tradeoff, and what to ask for when you want to peek behind the curtain
- What PlanetScale is becoming beyond MySQL/Vitess, including Postgres, Metal, and Nikky (sharding for Postgres)
- How AI workloads are changing database patterns, especially the shift toward write heavy systems and why that pressures reliability and security

Sam Lambert on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/isamlambert/
Rob Ocel on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robocel/
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Tracy Lee and A.D. Slaton sit down on The Context Window to unpack a wild week in AI, starting with the eye popping 500 billion dollars spent on AI infrastructure in 2025 and why the Cognizant CEO still says enterprise value is missing. They dig into reports of ChatGPT going “code red” in response to Gemini 3, what that means for OpenAI, and what it means for everyday builders trying to ship real products. Along the way they touch on ByteDance, call out LiveKit as a key piece of infrastructure for voice, video, and physical AI agents, and flag IBM’s move to acquire Confluent as another signal of where data and AI are heading.

What you will learn
- Why 500B spent on AI infrastructure has not translated into clear enterprise value yet
- What the Cognizant CEO’s comments really signal for teams building AI products
- How Gemini 3’s launch is shaking up the landscape for ChatGPT and OpenAI
- What a “Code Red” moment actually means for developers and companies relying on these platforms
- How LiveKit powers voice, video, and physical AI agents and where it fits in the stack
- Why IBM acquiring Confluent matters for data, streaming, and real time AI systems
- How to stay grounded and make practical decisions when AI news makes reality feel unstable
0:00 Intro
0:53 Are we overspending on AI infrastructure and where’s the enterprise value
2:54 Adoption gap, enablement work and why 100% AI generated code is still rare
6:11 High touch AI training, workshops and scaling AI practices across teams
8:58 Grok 4.22, AI trading experiments and quant style tools for everyone
13:51 OpenAI “Code Red,” rising competition and what changes for Agile with agents
20:37 ByteDance agentic phone, AR glasses and AI moving into the physical world
23:20 LiveKit, voice cloning, AI podcasts and the problem of AI slop
27:00 Thinking machines, social media’s role in AI and closing reflections

Tracy Lee on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracyslee/
A.D. Slaton on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adslaton/
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Environment variables and secrets are usually a mess: out of sync .env files, scattered API keys, painful onboarding, and brittle CI configs. In this episode of the Modern Web Podcast, Rob Ocel talks with Varlock co-creators Phil Miller and Theo Ephraim about how Varlock turns .env files into a real schema with types, validation, and documentation, pulls secrets from tools like 1Password and other backends, and centralizes configuration across environments and services. They also dig into protecting secrets in an AI-heavy world by redacting them from logs and responses, preventing accidental leaks from agents, and pushing toward an open env-spec standard so configuration becomes predictable, portable, and actually pleasant to work with.

What you will learn:
- Why traditional .env files and copy paste workflows break down as teams, services, and environments grow.
- How Varlock turns environment variables into a schema with types, validation, documentation, and generated TypeScript.- How to pull secrets from tools like 1Password and other backends without leaving them in plain text or scattering them across dashboards.
- How to manage multiple environments such as development, staging, and production from a single, declarative configuration source.
- How Varlock helps protect secrets in AI and MCP workflows by redacting them from logs and responses and blocking accidental leaks.
- What the env spec standard is and how a common schema format can make configuration more portable across tools, templates, and platforms.

Theo Ephraim on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theo-ephraim/
Phil Miller on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/themillman/
Rob Ocel on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robocel/
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Rob Ocel and Danny Thompson go deep on intentionality, the developer “superpower” that can speed up your growth, sharpen your judgment, and keep you from getting automated away in the AI era. Rob unpacks a simple loop (state intent → act → measure → review) with real stories, including the ticket he challenged on day one that saved a team six figures, and the “it seems to work” anti-pattern that shipped a mystery bug. Together they show how being deliberate before you write a line of code changes everything: scoping tickets, estimating work, documenting decisions, reviewing PRs, and speaking up, even as a junior.What you’ll learn: • The intentionality loop: how to set a hypothesis, capture outcomes, and improve fast • The exact moment to ask “Should we even do this ticket?” and how to push back safely • Why code is the last step: design notes, edge cases, and review context first • Estimation that actually works: start naive, compare to actuals, iterate to ±10% • How to avoid DRY misuse, “tragedy of the commons” code reviews, and stealth tech debt • Where to keep your working notes (GitHub, Notion, SharePoint) so reviewers can follow your logic • How juniors can question assumptions without blocking the room or their careerRob Ocel on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robocel/
Danny Thompson on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dthompsondev/
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