Advertise on podcast: The GitHub Podcast

Cassidy and Andrea are joined by Sameen Karim, Senior Product Manager at GitHub, to dig into stacked pull requests, GitHub's newly launched (and long-requested) way to break large changes into a linked chain of small, reviewable PRs. Sameen pulls back the curtain on just how deep this went: every time a PR updates, GitHub runs a live "ghost merge" simulation behind the scenes to check whether it's mergeable, and stacking meant multiplying that complexity across up to 100 linked PRs at once. The team had to rethink core assumptions about how a PR's base branch relates to its actual merge target, rewrite parts of the merge box that hadn't been touched in over a decade, build an entirely new asynchronous merge path, and close a code owners loophole that could otherwise let people sneak changes past review. Sameen also talks about "agent-driven testing," where GitHub ran swarms of agents around the clock trying to break the feature, how teams like Vercel, Nuxt, and the React team are already adopting stacks, and what's next: support for stacks across forks. The episode closes with three open source picks: Sarah Drasner's visual code explainers, the AGENTS.md standard, and the open source gh-stack CLI Sameen built (and rewrote in Go) to manage stacks locally. Links mentioned in the episode: GitHub UniverseSarah Drasner's code drawingsAGENTS.mdgh-stack CLI The GitHub Podcast is produced and edited by editaudio. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Cassidy and GPS are joined by Camilla Moraes, a product manager on GitHub's Maintainer Love (aka Tiny Wins) team, to talk about how the team finds and ships small, high-impact fixes for open source maintainers. Camilla walks through her path from engineering to product, and shares how the team's focus shifted this year from quick two-to-three-week "paper cuts" to a bigger, all-hands problem: the rise of low-quality, AI-generated contributions flooding repos. Camilla gives some insight into a new tool the Tiny Wins team has designed to address that issue: PR limits, which lets maintainers cap how many open PRs a user without write access can have at once. The group also talks through how the team prioritizes an endless stream of feedback from Slack, socials, and surveys, and how Camilla built her own repo-as-a-database system with Copilot to track it all. They close out with three open source picks: iOpenPod, Bento, and Camilla's own vibe-coded project for rating the health of a GitHub repo. Links mentioned in the episode: Maintainer CommunityiOpenPodBento  The GitHub Podcast is produced and edited by editaudio. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Cassidy and GPS dive into a round of AI hot takes to separate the extreme, engagement-bait opinions from the actual nuance. They debate whether developers still need to read AI-generated code, why “jobs won't hire you if you don't use AI” is more complicated than it sounds, and GPS's own hot take against the newest wave of paid coding bootcamps. From there they tackle whether skills have killed MCP, whether RAG is dead, and a borrowed hot take from their boss Martin: if you have to fine-tune a model to your code base, your code is bad. They close out with two open source picks: Pollinations AI, a generative AI platform experimenting with earning credits through code contributions, and Avian Visitors, a beautifully documented build log of a bird-listening e-ink display. Links mentioned in the episode: Pollinations AIAvian Visitors The GitHub Podcast is produced and edited by editaudio. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In today’s episode, Cassidy, Marlene, and GPS tackle the ever-growing pile of new AI and agent terminology that's popped up seemingly overnight. They break down loop engineering (designing systems that prompt your agents instead of prompting them yourself), the Ralph loop that helped popularize it, and how squads and fleets let multiple agents split up planning, testing, and review work in parallel. They also dig into harness engineering (the scaffolding around a model that turns raw text generation into something useful), the newly coined “hill climbing,” and why forward deployed engineer might just be a solutions architect with better AI tooling. They wrap with a look at the spectrum between closed, open weight, and open source models, plus each host's open source pick of the week: Astro 7, the RAE API project, and Tau. Links mentioned in the episode: Loop Engineering by Addy OsmaniRalph Wiggum as a "software engineer"MCPLangChainAstro 7RAE APITau The GitHub Podcast is produced and edited by editaudio. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The GitHub Podcast is back for Season 2! In the season opener, Cassidy Williams is joined by co-hosts Marlene Mhangami and GPS Peña-Siguenza. The trio revisits their favorite moments from Season 1, including Keeley Hammond's take on Electron and why “bloated JavaScript” hot takes don't hold up, Angie Jones's conversation on MCP and Goose, and the Tiny Wins team's work fixing the everyday "paper cuts" that make life easier for open source maintainers. From there, the hosts dig into their own winding paths into tech. GPS’ shares her journey from sysadmin to .NET and Cloud Advocacy to building a free open source platform that teaches cloud fundamentals (now used by nearly 7,000 people). Marlene traces her path from studying molecular biology to becoming a fixture in the Python community, and her early open source work on CuDF at NVIDIA, advocating for Ibis at Voltron Data, then starting the LangChain Azure repository at Microsoft. Cassidy rounds out the episode with insights to her front-end and React roots and her early days making tech memes on TikTok. Finally, each host shares an open source pick of the week: Mediabunny, Handy, and Cua. The hosts' favorite episodes from last season: Tiny Wins, Big Impact: Accessibility, MCP, and the Future of Open Source at GitHub LIVE from GitHub Universe: Angie Jones on Goose, MCP, and the Real-World Future of AI Agents Making Desktop Frameworks More Accessible with Electron Other links mentioned in the episode: Electron MCP Goose Learn to Cloud CUDF Ibis Langchain Azure Mediabunny Handy https://github.com/trycua/cua CUA The GitHub Podcast is produced and edited by editaudio. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this year-in-review episode of The GitHub Podcast, Cassidy and Abby are joined by Helen Hou-Sandí, GitHub’s engineering manager for the Accessibility Engineering team and lead developer in the WordPress project. They dig into Maintainer Tiny Wins, a series of two week long timeboxed improvements that save millions of developer minutes a day, from smarter PR reviewers panels and one-click merge conflict resolution to long-awaited WebP support. Helen shares how accessibility issues often spark broader UX improvements, and why fixing “just” a border color can evolve into deeply impactful changes at GitHub’s scale. They also explore the rise of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) as an open standard, GitHub’s new open source accessibility scanner action, supporting non-code contributors and AI as the “over-eager new contributor. Whether you’re a maintainer, a contributor, or just love a good Furby-powered keynote, this episode is a love letter to the tiny details that make open source better for everyone. Links mentioned in the episode: GitHub Accessibility Scanner Action Project Bluefin GitHub Universe 2025 – Day Two Keynote Unlocking the Power of MCP 2025 Octoverse Report Refined GitHub Browser Extension Git History Cleaner Open Source Accessibility Summit The GitHub Podcast is produced and edited by editaudio. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode guest host Greg Cochran from the GitHub Secure Open Source Fund brings together four maintainers who are helping secure the open source projects we all depend on: Christian (Log4j/Log4Shell), Carlos (GoReleaser), Michael (EVCC), and Camila (ScanAPI) to unpack what it really looks like to level up security in critical OSS. They share how the Fund’s three-week security sprint, ongoing check-ins, and tight-knit community helped them move from “we don’t know what we don’t know” to concrete wins: hardened GitHub Actions pipelines, incident response plans, better reporting processes, and SBOMs that actually include dependency licenses. They also talk candidly about asking “dumb” questions in a trusted space and the ripple effect when one project’s security posture improves across its dependents. Finally, the group dives into AI security: using fuzzing, GitHub Copilot, and tools like the Secure Code Game both to find vulnerabilities faster and to keep up with attackers who now have AI on their side too. Links mentioned in the episode:  GitHub Secure Open Source Fund overview Announcing GitHub Secure Open Source Fund Inside the breach that broke the internet: The untold story of Log4Shell Log4j / Log4Shell video (castle interview with Christian) EVCC – open source EV charging & energy management  GoReleaser – release engineering automation ScanAPI – automated API testing & live documentation GitHub Security Lab Secure Code Game (GitHub Security Lab) GitHub Copilot – AI coding assistant The GitHub Podcast is produced and edited by editaudio. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Abby sits down with Angie Jones, VP of Engineering at Block, live at GitHub Universe to talk about Goose, Block’s open source AI agent and reference implementation of the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Angie shares how Goose went from an internal tool to an open source project that lets the community drive features like multimodel support, and how Block’s 12,000 employees across 15+ job functions (not just engineers) now use agents every day. They dig into practical, non-hype uses of AI agents: detecting when students are struggling, triaging open source issues, segmenting 80k+ sales leads, and even letting a salesperson “vibe code” a feature on the train. Angie also talks about trust and control when giving AI access to codebases, why developers are tired of flashy demos, and how her new AI Builder Fellowship is designed to support the next generation of native AI builders.  Links mentioned in the episode:  https://angiejones.tech https://github.com/block/goose https://github.com/block https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol https://github.com/features/copilot https://testautomationu.applitools.com https://www.selenium.dev https://playwright.dev https://www.cypress.io https://code.visualstudio.com https://www.salesforce.com https://github.com/martinwoodward/pyfluff The GitHub Podcast is produced and edited by editaudio. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, recorded live at GitHub Universe 2025, Andrea sits down with Frank “Frenck” Nijhof, a GitHub Star and project lead for Home Assistant, one of the most active open source projects on the platform. They unpack how millions of households run privacy-first automations locally (no cloud required), why the Open Home Foundation exists to prevent vendor lock-in and e-waste, and how this famously welcoming community scaled to 21k+ contributors. Frank also shares insights about the development of “Assist,” an open, local-first voice assistant (with optional AI), as well as the new “Home Assist Green” hardware device, plus practical ways non-coders can meaningfully contribute to the project, too. Links mentioned in the episode: https://github.com/frenck https://www.home-assistant.io https://www.home-assistant.io/green https://www.home-assistant.io/voice https://www.home-assistant.io/assist https://www.esphome.io https://github.com/home-assistant https://www.raspberrypi.com The GitHub Podcast is produced and edited by editaudio. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Andrea and Kedasha sit down with data whisperer Jeff Luszcz, one of the wizards behind GitHub’s annual Octoverse report, to unpack this year’s biggest shifts. They get into why TypeScript overtook Python on GitHub, how AI-assisted “vibe coding” and agentic workflows are reshaping everyday engineering, and what it means that more than one new developer joins GitHub every second. From 1.12B open source contributions and 518M merged PRs to COBOL’s unexpected comeback, global growth (hello India, Brazil and Indonesia), and “security by default” with CodeQL and Dependabot, this episode turns the numbers into next steps for your career and your open source projects. Links mentioned in the episode: https://octoverse.github.com https://github.com/jeffrey-luszcz https://github.com/features/copilot https://codeql.github.com https://docs.github.com/code-security/dependabot https://docs.github.com/code-security/secret-scanning/introduction/about-secret-scanning https://www.typescriptlang.org https://www.python.org https://nextjs.org https://vitejs.dev https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=GitHub.copilot https://www.home-assistant.io https://code.visualstudio.com https://github.com/explore The GitHub Podcast is produced and edited by editaudio. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode of the GitHub Podcast, Abby sits down with Felix Reda, Director of Developer Policy at GitHub, and Christian Grobmeier, a longtime Log4J maintainer, to reflect on the aftermath of the Log4Shell vulnerability and how it reshaped open source funding. They discuss the creation of Germany’s Sovereign Tech Fund, the challenges and opportunities funding brings to open source projects, and what it takes to build sustainable and resilient developer communities. The conversation highlights the major lessons learned from these events, from managing resources and community health to navigating government and industry support. Read more about Log4Shell and watch the full story over on the GitHub blog. Links mentioned in the episode: https://sovereigntechfund.de/ https://okfn.de/ https://prototypefund.de/ https://www.opentech.fund/ https://nlnet.nl/ https://github.blog/2022-05-09-introducing-the-github-secure-open-source-fund/ https://dripapp.org/ https://ghost.org/ https://ttcmap.ca/ The GitHub Podcast is produced and edited by editaudio. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Homebrew’s project lead Mike McQuaid joins Abby and Andrea to unpack what it really takes to sustain one of the most-used developer tools on macOS and Linux. From early GitHub workflows to today’s automation and guardrails, Mike details the soft-power leadership that keeps volunteers motivated, and shares insights on how to scale contributions, keep a small maintainer team effective, and triage with empathy (and boundaries). This episode covers governance, “saying no,” using AI responsibly, and how IRL feedback at Universe turned into performance wins. Links mentioned in the episode: https://brew.sh https://www.macports.org https://fosdem.org https://githubuniverse.com https://mikemcquaid.com https://github.com/TheoPFR/somo github.com/github/spec-kit https://flukeout.github.io/ The GitHub Podcast is produced and edited by editaudio. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode of the GitHub Podcast, Abby and Kedasha are joined by Keeley Hammond, a longtime maintainer of the Electron project. They explore the inner workings of one of the most widely used open source desktop frameworks, dive into how Electron empowers developers to build cross-platform desktop apps with web technologies, and discuss what it takes to build a welcoming and sustainable open source community at scale. The conversation touches on contributor culture, project governance, automation tools, and the role of AI in open source, in both its promise and its challenges. Links mentioned in the episode: https://github.com/electron/electron https://github.com/electron/forge https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/ https://openjsf.org/ https://github.com/vert-d https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025/ https://github.com/electron/governance https://github.com/electron/electron/issues https://github.com/unjs/issue-triage The GitHub Podcast is produced and edited by editaudio. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode of the GitHub Podcast, Cassidy and Kedasha explore the rise of personal software tools built by developers for themselves, and shared with the world through open source. From command line apps to browser extensions, they dive into how small, purpose-built projects can have a big impact, reflecting on how AI is making development more accessible, while celebrating the joy of creative problem-solving, and spotlighting standout repos from within the GitHub community. Links mentioned in the episode: https://www.raycast.com/ https://espanso.org/ https://astro.build/ https://github.com/features/copilot https://github.com/explore The GitHub Podcast is hosted by Abigail Cabunoc Mayes, Kedasha Kerr and Cassidy Williams. The show is edited, mixed and produced by Victoria Marin. Thank you to our production partner, editaudio. The GitHub Podcast is produced and edited by editaudio. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode of the GitHub Podcast, Cassidy, Abby, and Andrea are joined by developer advocate, educator, and creator of CodeTV, Jason Lengstorf. They uncover Jason’s journey through open source, from live coding streams to building engaging, educational content for developers, touching on the evolution of JavaScript, the rise of AI tools and MCP, and how open source continues to empower creators and communities along the way. Finally, the team spotlights their favorite open source projects and discusses why fun, accessibility, and collaboration are essential to developer learning today. Links mentioned in the episode: https://www.learnwithjason.dev https://github.com/colinhacks/zod https://github.com/jherr https://github.com/sdras https://github.com/svg/svgo https://github.com/pearcleaner/pearcleaner https://cobalt.tools https://github.com/philosowaffle/Peloton-to-Garmin https://graphql.org https://nextjs.org https://tailwindcss.com This episode of The GitHub Podcast is hosted by Abigail Cabunoc Mayes, Andrea Griffiths, and Cassidy Williams. The show is edited, mixed and produced by Victoria Marin. Thank you to our production partner, editaudio. The GitHub Podcast is produced and edited by editaudio. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.