Most people are trying to build one AI agent that does everything. I’m experimenting with the opposite: small, specialized agents with clear responsibilities, handoffs, and validation. Here I am with 18 agents working together. I am constantly thinking about my agents in a pipeline and handoffs.
Danny Thompson
@dthompsondev.bsky.social
Senior Developer Advocate at Atlassian | Co-Host of The Programming Podcast | I've helped 1000s of people land jobs in tech | Get all my details, links and more at Dthompsondev.com
WE NEED VOLUNTEERS! Commit your Code is 30 days away! The Call For Volunteers is now open for in person in Dallas! We need around 40 volunteers to help but we don't want you to miss the whole experience. Volunteer shifts are 5 hours long. Then we want you to be an attendee! forms.gle/aMSof79f9LfF...
CYC'26 Call for Volunteers
This form is a call for volunteers to assist with the setup and facilitation of the Commit Your Code Conference of 2026. All volunteer submissions must be able to be present in person. This is a gener...
forms.gle
When people wonder how I feel better about AI writing a lot of code. This is how. When it runs all of these tests and I know things are working the way they should be. This gives me confidence. Pre-AI I used to talk about unit testing a lot. Post-AI I talk about it even more!
Opus 5 has not been a great experience for me so far. Either I am missing something or they tweaked something that shouldn't have been tweaked. I'm genuinely confused about this. The last 2 days I've been testing it like I do with every model release but this has been rough.
I have fixed more AI generated resumes than I can count. The problem is the amount of money people end up losing just trying to get hired. I have been building Undersold because you have been underselling yourself for years. In interviews, resumes, LinkedIn and more. Time to fix that! ⤵️
LAST NIGHTS MEETUP WAS A HUGE SUCCESS! Every quarter we try to do one "code together" A night with no speakers, no agenda, just a software developer community BEING a community and last night was amazing! Developers supporting other developers and just geeking out together!
IF YOU EVER WONDERED WHY I make it mandatory for the projects being built in the cohort solve real problems, this is why right here. HE GOT THE JOB Y'ALL!! "I got this job mainly talking about the project from the cohort the way we used AI for 1 week."
"I officially pushed to prod last week!" All these years later we still have people landing jobs in tech successfully 🥹 If you ever wondered why I still do it, it's these moments. What was the first solution you pushed to prod in a company?
WE ARE LESS THAN 60 DAYS AWAY FROM The Commit Your Code Conference 2026! Who am I going to see at CYC26? 🤔
Straight from The Programming Podcast by @dthompsondev.bsky.social & @leonnoel.bsky.social: 84% of devs feel more productive with AI coding tools 43% feel MUCH more productive The kicker: productivity feeling scales directly with how agentic your workflow is. The more agents do, the better it is.
I had so much fun being a guest on the Programming Podcast. We talked about how we are currently using AI (and Me and Jeremy shilled @gitkraken.com a bit). @dthompsondev.bsky.social and @leonnoel.bsky.social are so easy to talk to that this just felt like a normal conversation we would have had.
I can't wait for summer camp!! - I mean #CYC26. If y'all are able to go - DO IT. One of my favorite confs of all time. AND tickets are just $40! Shout out to the @commityourcode.bsky.social organizers for all their efforts and @dthompsondev.bsky.social for his help reworking my talk. 🥰
Happy Father's Day to all of the fathers out there who are there for their families, who show up even in the hardest moments and earn that title of father.
the developer's guide to ai can officially be bought in-person, or ordered, from @barnesandnoble.com 🎉 📷 by @dthompsondev.bsky.social
Cursor just got acquired by SpaceX for $60 billion. - IDEs already existed - VS Code was free - JetBrains was around Cursor didn't invent the category. Stop thinking you need to cure cancer with code to succeed. Build YOUR solution It might be exactly what someone else needs.
Shit, my secret has been revealed 🤦
Step 1: Buy Domain Step 2: Abandon Project
THE BEST PART from Seattle last night at the Atlassian office: watching the room go from leaning back in their chairs to leaning forward, taking notes, when we started showing what Rovo, Teamwork Graph & Forge can do! My heart is full y'all Thank you for making my first trip to the PNW amazing! 🧡
Last Night was a HUGE SUCCESS San Francisco! I wish I took more pics! - I showed how I use voice messages in Whatsapp to orchestrate agents in Jira - Reign showed teamwork graph & Agentic building! So many great people showed up to last night's meetup! Now headed to Seattle!
18 months of work Countless revisions Sleepless nights In just 3 HOURS, "The Developer's Guide To AI" is officially live everywhere! I just wrapped up the book website & I'm so hyped with how it turned out. Check it out and let me know what you think! www.developerguide.ai
The Developer's Guide to AI: From Prompts to Agents
Build real AI systems, not toy demos. A hands-on field guide for working developers. From No Starch Press.
developerguide.ai
SPEAKERS FOR THE COMMIT YOUR CODE CONFERENCE! Spent my Sunday working on this. We have 112 speakers this year! Still adding more to the site but I love seeing these amazing people in the same place! 100% of ALL ticket sales donated to charity. The conference FOR the community!
SF and Seattle! I'm hosting meetups in your cities this week! Tuesday and Thursday! A Night Of Enterprise AI! Who do I know in these areas? 🤔
HE GOT THE JOB Y'ALL!!! He did it 🥹 He has absolutely poured in so much effort to make this happen! Going to meetups, networking, cohorts and more! He absolutely did it y'all! He got the new company laptop so now it's official! Show Jim some love y'all!
We might be on track to have 112 speakers this year for CYC26.👀 CFP is closed and we are going through all the submissions now trying to narrow everything down. As a reminder, Virtual tickets are free. In person is $40 and 100% is donated to charity! food covered!
You can buy the template, but you have to earn the architecture.
Hopefully we will have the full speaker lineup for Commit Your Code Conference 2026 announced this week on the website! I think we have around 30 of the 100 speakers currently on the site! 95 Days away! 🤯
After 2.5 weeks of traveling I'm finally home 😮💨 Exhausted but going to rest up because I'm less than 2 weeks I will be in San Francisco and then Seattle for meetups Atlassian is hosting!!
Right now, there are two extremes with AI: 1. Total AI Slop 2. Refusal to use it/bare minimum use In between is the sweet spot where real value, progress, & success are. The problem? Everyone is so busy jumping to the extremes that they're missing the actual opportunity.
Fine-tuning isn't the answer. It's the last resort. Try prompts. Then RAG. THEN fine-tune. If you skipped to step 3, you're spending 10x to solve a step 1 problem.
Here's the math nobody runs that will change how you think about this: You are interviewing for a job that is offering $100K per year. Standard annual raise = 3% or in this case, $3,000. You negotiate +$20K at the offer stage of the job interview. ⤵️