Better with Kent

Kent C. Dodds
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Technology

Solo episodes from Kent C. Dodds on durable skills for people who ship software: judgment, accountability, problem clarity, and what stays valuable as AI takes on more implementation. Kent teaches directly on camera — no guest, one idea at a time. Complements guest interviews on Become a Product Engineer (Chats with Kent). Episode 1 adapts The Last Software Engineer; later episodes cover traps like building the wrong thing faster and skills like making user pain visible. Subscribe for evergreen episodes as the series grows.

  1. 4d ago ·  Video

    My AI Employees Won't Let Me Sleep

    I gave my AI agents everything they need to work without me, and now they never sleep, never eat, and never run out of questions for me. Here's what that's costing me (sleep, meals, and time with my kids) and the quiet hours fix I built for my Grok Bots on camera. (00:00) - They never sleep (00:23) - I removed every reason to wait on me (01:00) - My huge mistake: the software factory (01:56) - I turned into a boss of agents (02:57) - The only limit left is me (04:45) - What happened at the theme park (05:24) - No sleep, no lunch, no exercise (06:44) - "I'm going to sleep" (then 3 more messages) (06:59) - Holding myself accountable (07:39) - What's on my plate (08:41) - The fix: quiet hours for my agents (10:05) - How do you make yourself stop? Better with Kent - durable skills for people who ship software. Thank you to PowerSync for sponsoring this episode: https://kcd.link/powersync I can get a month's worth of work done by answering a couple of questions before bed. Cloud agents keep running with my laptop closed, I check on them from my phone, and Kody gives them the connections to get context and take action on their own. All that's left for me is the decision making. That sounds amazing until you realize the questions never end. A boss knows they can't text their employees at 2 in the morning and expect an answer. My agents don't have that limit. They answer in seconds, every time. So the only limit left is me. In this episode I get honest about what that's costing me: sending messages to my agents while I was in line at a theme park with my kids, skipping meals, skipping workouts, and telling an agent "I'm going to sleep" at 1:17 in the morning, then sending it three more messages within 92 seconds. Willpower is clearly not going to fix this. So I built quiet hours for my Grok Bots, right on camera. From 10 PM to 8 AM they keep working, but they only interrupt me for something truly urgent (like production being down), and I get one summary in the morning. If you've got agents that never sleep, how do you make yourself stop? Tell me in the comments. Links PowerSync (sponsor)How to Put Your Codebase on AutopilotHow to Increase Your Leverage with Agents (the theme park video)KodyMEGA (mega.dev)Better with Kent

    My AI Employees Won't Let Me Sleep

  2. Oct 20 ·  Video

    The Future of Software is Invisible

    SaaS products are in serious trouble, and it's not because someone vibe coded Adobe in Rust. We're heading toward a world where billions of people create software without even realizing it, because their agents write it for them. I call it invisible software. Is your product ready for that? (00:00) - SaaS is in serious trouble (00:24) - Nobody wants to be a coder (00:40) - Agents are outgrowing the benchmarks (01:18) - Billions of people's agents (03:31) - Victoria's agent builds her an app (04:58) - Max forks it with a Book now button (06:55) - Victoria pulls in Max's change (08:17) - Walled gardens (and why I built Kody) (09:53) - Seven Adobe apps vibe coded in Rust (11:03) - Software engineering isn't going anywhere (11:54) - Make your software agent ready (12:34) - Is your site agent ready? (13:11) - Is your app ready for the next billion users? Better with Kent - durable skills for people who ship software. Thank you to Warp Build for sponsoring this episode: https://kcd.link/warpbuild People don't want apps. They want their problems solved. Agents get better every month (we're running out of benchmarks hard enough to measure them), so more and more of those problems will be solved by software an agent writes on the spot. Not millions of developers writing code by hand at the speed of humans, but billions of people whose agents write, commit, and push code at the speed of AI. I call this invisible software. In this episode I walk through a demo with two barbers, Victoria and Max. A proactive agent builds Victoria a custom client app wired up to her Stripe and iMessage. Max forks it for his Square store and adds a Book now button. Victoria pulls his change back into her version. Then Max tries to switch agents and runs straight into a walled garden (which is a big part of why I'm building Kody). Software engineering isn't going anywhere. Banks, airlines, and infrastructure still need teams who own their systems. But how you solve problems for your users is going to change shape. If your product isn't easy for agents to use, your users' agents will go to your competitors. So, is your app ready for the next billion users? Links Warp Build (sponsor)KodyInvisible software demoArtCraft: 7 Adobe apps vibe coded in RustReverse Engineer AnythingEpoch AI Benchmarking HubMETR time horizonsIs It Agent Ready? (Cloudflare)is-agentic (Vercel)Better with Kent

    The Future of Software is Invisible

  3. Oct 13 ·  Video

    How to Put Your Codebase on Autopilot

    I shipped 122 PRs in 24 hours straight out of my software factory, mostly while I was doing something else. Here's the system that lets agents file their own friction, make good PRs, catch their own mistakes, and keep the blast radius small. Here's what 122 PRs in one day looks like: https://github.com/kentcdodds/kody/releases/tag/v2026.10.11 (00:00) - 122 PRs in 24 hours (00:17) - Agent-filed friction, agent-shipped fix (00:51) - Agents work around friction (01:41) - The ship PR skill files friction (02:43) - Lauren Tan: 2,500 PRs a month (03:43) - Three pillars of confidence (04:19) - Sponsor: Devin (05:35) - Good PRs: decisions directory (06:06) - Primitives catalog (07:11) - control Kody CLI for self-verification (08:24) - System recap on every PR (09:24) - Catch mistakes: the ship PR package (10:00) - AI reviewers: Bugbot, CodeRabbit, Devin (11:07) - Merge, watch deploy, Discord report (12:19) - Limit blast radius: feature flags (13:46) - Disaster recovery (14:33) - Cleanup: agents don't love deleting code (15:28) - Dogfooding and product decisions (16:31) - Pipe signals in: Sentry, errors, feedback (18:00) - Nightly and weekly agents (18:35) - Recap Better with Kent - durable skills for people who ship software. Thank you to Devin (Cognition) for sponsoring this episode: https://kcd.link/cognition Agents don't fix friction. They work around it, and those workarounds compound across every agent touching your codebase. The fix is to turn your agents into complainers: the ship PR skill ends every merge by filing friction, and other agents come through and fix it - sometimes while you sleep. Kent walks the three pillars that make that safe: (1) good PRs in the first place (a decisions directory, a primitives catalog, the control Kody CLI for self-verification, and a system recap on every PR), (2) catch mistakes before prod (the ship PR package, CI, CodeRabbit, Cursor Bugbot, Devin AI review, preview deploys), and (3) limit the blast radius (feature flags with success metrics, disaster recovery with restore tests). Then cleanup, dogfooding, and signal pipelines from Sentry, runtime errors, user feedback, and nightly/weekly agents. Agents handle polish, code quality, and implementation. The product vision stays with you. Links Devin (sponsor)KodyBetter with Kent

    How to Put Your Codebase on Autopilot

  4. Oct 6 ·  Video

    Steal My App (I'll Show You How)

    Self-hosting Kody off Cloudflare used to sound thermonuclear. Deno Celld changed the math — and Kent's Grok bot handed the experiment to Devin. Then docker compose up actually worked. (00:00) - Cold open: Kody running in Docker (00:10) - Better with Kent (00:16) - Self-hosted Kody is real — here's the path (00:58) - Ask: self-host Kody off Cloudflare (01:10) - Clarify: Kody, not Jev (01:42) - Thermonuclear — tied to Cloudflare (02:02) - Own Cloudflare account is fine under OSS (02:33) - Deno Celld — hard, not thermonuclear (04:23) - Revised difficulty: hard is OK for agents (04:37) - Hand the experiment to Devin via Kody (06:16) - Devin launches on Ultra (06:46) - Prompt, auth gaps, and Kody unsticks Devin (08:15) - Inspect the Celld repo and fill gaps (08:57) - Ship-PR loop until main is green (10:41) - Rebuild the UI to match official Kody (12:38) - Make it tryable: public image + README (14:09) - Follow the README ourselves (14:56) - docker compose up — it works (15:27) - Create account on localhost:8080 (16:33) - Connect Cursor MCP (and fix public URL) (17:45) - Connected — memory + dad-joke package (19:23) - Success: first run without reading the code (20:02) - What's still missing — contribute if you care (20:56) - Homework: self-host or use kody.codes (21:24) - Close Better with Kent - durable skills for people who ship software. Kent asks his Grok bot how hard it is to self-host Kody off Cloudflare. First answer: thermonuclear rewrite. Then Deno Celld (Workers + Durable Objects on your machines, S3-compatible state) revises that to hard — and hard is fine when you hand it to an agent. Kody briefs Devin Cloud to build a Celld-based self-hosted Kody. Auth hiccups, gap fills, ship-PR loops, GHCR image, from-zero smoke. Kent follows the README, docker compose up, creates an account, connects Cursor MCP, saves a memory, and ships a dad-joke package — first run without looking at the code. Homework: if you want self-hosted Kody, contribute. If not, use kody.codes and let hosted handle the edge. Links KodyBetter with Kent

    Steal My App (I'll Show You How)

  5. Sep 25 ·  Video

    Build a Software Pipeline: Help your agent help you

    Package apps on Kody turn a package into something you can install and use on your phone. This episode walks morning briefing, package-app-kit, and a phone demo of a swipe deck over Gmail, GitHub, and Calendar. Better with Kent - durable skills for people who ship software. Thank you to Devin (Cognition) for sponsoring this episode: https://kcd.link/cognition Kent shows package apps on kody.codes with @kentcdodds/morning-briefing and @kentcdodds/package-app-kit, then cuts to a phone demo of Claude building a Tinder-for-attention swipe deck over real feeds. Homework: pick one package you already trust and ask what it would take to ship it as an installable app surface, not just an MCP tool. Links KodyBetter with Kent

    Build a Software Pipeline: Help your agent help you

  6. Sep 15 ·  Video

    Make your agent safe and autonomous

    Gmail has no drafts-only OAuth scope. If an agent can draft, it can send. Two Kody locks make drafts-never-send actually true. (00:00) - Cold open: agent sent email without review (00:52) - Better with Kent (01:25) - PocketOS: overscoped token callback (02:20) - Gmail has no drafts-only scope (02:46) - Two locks: token + package (03:40) - Elephant: your current Gmail plugin (05:47) - Ask the agent / paste the guide (07:17) - Google Cloud OAuth client (13:03) - Connect Google to Kody (15:38) - Smoke-test draft (no send) (16:56) - Save and lock the drafts package (19:16) - Pin the Google token in Integrations (19:47) - Browse the locked package files (20:35) - Verify: execute blocked + promote (22:52) - Close: lock the grant (23:49) - Homework: .env God-tokens Better with Kent - durable skills for people who ship software. Gmail has no drafts-only OAuth scope. gmail.compose can draft and send. If an agent can draft, it can send - unless you put a real grant in front of the token. Kent walks the locked-gmail-drafts path on Kody: smoke-test a draft with the coarse Google token, then save a thin drafts-only package, lock that package so it cannot grow send without a promoted commit, and pin the Google connection so ad hoc execute cannot call it. Two locks. The Google token stays coarse; the pair is the grant Google will not issue. Homework: open your .env, look at the God-tokens your agent can slurp, and put them behind a grant the agent cannot widen. Kody is one way. The skill is the grant, not the product. Guides: https://kody.codes/guides/locked-gmail-drafts and https://kody.codes/guides/google Links Locked Gmail drafts guideGoogle connectKodyBetter with Kent

    Make your agent safe and autonomous

  7. Sep 8 ·  Video

    Introducing Kody: Your Personal Software Factory

    You already paid an agent to figure it out. Tomorrow you ask again. Kody turns the good answer into a package you keep, so any agent can run it forever. (00:00) - You ask again (00:22) - What if you only had to ask once? (00:43) - A personal software factory (01:05) - Then it keeps running (01:25) - Still running (01:50) - Not another agent (02:06) - Secrets stay in Kody (02:36) - Say it once, run it forever Better with Kent - durable skills for people who ship software. You ask your agent to do something. It figures it out eventually. Tomorrow you ask again. New chat, new agent, new device. You didn't keep it. You just paid for the agent to do it again. What if you only had to ask once? Kody is not another AI agent. You've already got one of those. Probably several. Kody is what the agent reaches for when the work shouldn't disappear when the conversation ends. Your agent figures something out once. Kody saves it as a package: real code you own. Think of it as your own mini GitHub and npm. Then it runs on a schedule, a webhook, a tap on a phone. No model in the loop. Faster, cheaper, safer. And it keeps running in the cloud when your laptop is sleeping or dead. Secrets stay in Kody. The agent stays blind. Packages can lock so an agent cannot go rogue and delete your email. Use the agents you love. The personal software they wrote comes with you to all of them. Say it once. Run it forever. For all the agents you use today and the ones you'll use tomorrow. Give your agents a home for free at https://kody.codes Source is on GitHub. Go give it a star. Related: How Kody Gives Your Agents a Shared Home - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5G8uaZHrVI Links KodyKody on GitHubHow Kody worksHow Kody Gives Your Agents a Shared Home (ep 22)Better with Kent

    Introducing Kody: Your Personal Software Factory

  8. Aug 27 ·  Video

    How Kody Gives Your Agents a Shared Home

    You already pay for more than one agent. Give them a shared home so Cursor, Grok, and Devin share software, memories, and tasks instead of starting from zero every chat. (00:00) - Meet Kody (00:22) - Better with Kent (00:46) - How Kody works (01:08) - Cursor asks what the bot shipped (01:40) - Search, conversation ID, memories (03:03) - Execute + secrets stay in Kody (04:35) - Code mode: only the answer comes back (05:45) - Save it as a package (07:23) - Grok reuses the package (09:16) - Devin: tell me when it ships (11:36) - What the agents wrote (13:15) - Any agent can run it (13:52) - Early-access invite (14:28) - Close: give agents a home Better with Kent - durable skills for people who ship software. You probably subscribe to more than one agent. Cursor on the laptop. Grok on a walk. Devin when you want something watched overnight. Each one starts from a blank context window. None of them share the software, memories, or secrets you already built in the last one. Kody is that shared home. Kent walks the How Kody Works page end to end. Cursor does not know the favorite bot, so it searches Kody, picks up memories plus a githubAccessToken secret it never actually sees, and runs the fetch in an isolate. Code mode returns only the answer you asked for, type-checked. Then it saves the work as a package: @u/kodybot what-shipped. Grok reuses that package from a phone with no rewrite. Devin cannot hang a webhook on someone else's GitHub activity, so it adds a morning job and a daily digest email instead. The files look like normal package.json plus kody.jobs, a README intent, and JSDoc the next agent can search. Secrets stay in Kody. Packages can lock a secret so only that package can use it. You can edit a package from a phone with no local git because the agent opens a repo session that simulates git. You do not have to install Kody to take the skill. Agents leapfrog each other. Give them a place to share software, ideas, memories, and tasks so you can switch freely. Early access invite code: YOUTUBE-FRIEND Redeem it at https://kody.codes/signup?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=bwk-shared-home&utm_content=signup Related (context only): I built my own OpenClaw - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnztlHzhYvk Links KodyEarly access signup (code YOUTUBE-FRIEND)How Kody worksKody on GitHubI built my own OpenClaw (ep 06)Better with Kent

    How Kody Gives Your Agents a Shared Home
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Solo episodes from Kent C. Dodds on durable skills for people who ship software: judgment, accountability, problem clarity, and what stays valuable as AI takes on more implementation. Kent teaches directly on camera — no guest, one idea at a time. Complements guest interviews on Become a Product Engineer (Chats with Kent). Episode 1 adapts The Last Software Engineer; later episodes cover traps like building the wrong thing faster and skills like making user pain visible. Subscribe for evergreen episodes as the series grows.

Information

  • Creator
    Kent C. Dodds
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    30
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Kent C. Dodds Tech LLC
  • Show Website
    Better with Kent

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