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Fragmented - AI Developer Podcast

Kaushik Gopal, Iury Souza

Fragmented is an AI developer podcast for engineers who want to go beyond vibe coding and ship real software.

We cover AI-assisted development the way working engineers actually use it: prompting strategies, code review, testing, debugging, workflows, and building production-grade software with AI tools. No hype. No "I shipped a SaaS in a weekend" stories. Just tactics that work.

Hosted by Kaushik Gopal and Iury Souza — software engineers using AI daily to build and ship real products.

From vibe coding to software engineering — one episode at a time. Our goal: help you use AI to become a better engineer, not be replaced by one.

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20 episodes
weekly
Avg 30 min
English

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#312
Tuesday · 1 hr
312 - Understanding Pi Durable with Mario & Armin of Earendil
Pi creator Mario Zechner and Earendil co-founder Armin Ronacher join KG to explain Pi Durable: explicit tasks, crash recovery, and the primitives for multiplayer agents. We also dig into why Pi added MCP and codemode, and why a harness that can rewrite itself still needs a clear goal.
#311
September 6 · 12 min
311 - Self learning harnesses are here
Claude Code and Codex have been the mainstay. OpenCode and Pi showed what open-source harnesses could be. But two new entries just moved the goalposts: DeepSeek's Cordis kernel treats everything — even the agent loop itself — as a hot-swappable plugin, and Prime Agent runs the whole harness inside a live REPL where sub-agents are just function calls. Self-learning harnesses are here, and they're open source.
#310
April 14 · 59 min
310 - Mitchell Hashimoto on Ghostty & His Agentic Coding Workflow
Mitchell Hashimoto co-founded HashiCorp, built some of the most impressive DevOps tools like Vagrant and Terraform, sold the company to IBM — and then built a terminal. Ghostty is now where a huge chunk of agentic coding actually happens. Mitchell was an AI skeptic. We walk through his six-step adoption framework and the workflows he uses day to day — warm-start research, Hail Mary prompts across twenty GitHub issues, and knowing when to let the agent slam dunk it. Full shownotes at https://fra
#309
April 1 · 25 min
309 - Background Agents
Andrej Karpathy says the goal is to maximize how long an agent runs without your intervention. But there's a false summit most teams hit first: individual speed goes up while system speed stalls, your laptop roars under four parallel Gradle builds, and review queues back up. Kaushik and Iury trace the full arc — from local multitasking to cloud-hosted async work to fully autonomous agents that fire on repo events and put PRs in your inbox. Full shownotes at https://fragmentedpodcast.com/episode
#308
March 24 · 24 min
308 - How Image Diffusion Models Work - the 20 minute explainer
You already know how LLMs work from our popular 20-minute explainer. Now we take it to images. What does Michelangelo have to do with stable diffusion? More than you'd think. Walk away knowing how image generation actually works — and what it has in common with the text models you already understand. Full shownotes at https://fragmentedpodcast.com/episodes/308/
#307
March 17 · 29 min
307 - Harness Engineering - the hard part of AI coding
The hard part of AI coding isn't generating code — it's controlling quality, safety, and drift. Kaushik and Iury break down harness engineering: the five pillars for shaping an agent's environment and what it looks like when teams build custom harnesses from scratch. Full shownotes at - https://fragmentedpodcast.com/episodes/307
#306
March 10 · 23 min
306 - Keeping your agent instructions in sync and effective
AGENTS.md is becoming the common language for AI coding tools, but keeping repo rules, personal rules, and tool-specific files in sync is still messy. In this episode, Kaushik and Iury break down the sync problem, compare their own setups, and unpack what the latest AGENTS.md research actually says. Full shownotes at https://fragmentedpodcast.com/episodes/306/
#305
February 17 · 26 min
305 - Subagents explained - What they are, when (not) to spawn them
Subagents are becoming a core primitive for serious AI-assisted development. In this episode, Kaushik and Iury disambiguate "agent" terminology, unpack plan mode vs subagents, and explain how parallel, scoped workers improve research quality without polluting the main thread. Full shownotes at https://fragmentedpodcast.com/episodes/305
#304
February 9 · 26 min
304 - Agent Skills - when to use them and why they matter
Agent Skills look simple, but they are one of the most powerful building blocks in modern AI coding workflows. In this episode, Kaushik and Iury break down when to use skills, how progressive disclosure works, and how skills compare with commands, instructions, and MCPs. Full shownotes at https://fragmentedpodcast.com/episodes/304
#303
February 2 · 25 min
303 - How LLMs Work - the 20 minute explainer
Ever get asked "how do LLMs work?" at a party and freeze? We walk through the full pipeline: tokenization, embeddings, inference — so you understand it well enough to explain it. Walk away with a mental model that you can use for your next dinner party.
#302
January 26 · 19 min
302 - MCPs Explained - what they are and when to use them
MCPs are everywhere, but are they worth the token cost? We break down what Model Context Protocol actually is, how it differs from just using CLIs, the tradeoffs you should know about, and when MCPs actually make sense for your workflow. Full shownotes at https://fragmentedpodcast.com/episodes/302
#301
January 19 · 24 min
301 - The AI coding ladder
Most folks reference "AI coding" like it's one thing. It's really not. In this foundational episode Kaushik & Iury walk through (at least) four paradigms — from super autocomplete to agent orchestration — each with different workflows, expectations, and mental models. What do most developers follow today? Where is the frontier? What's coming in the future? Listen to the episode and find out!
#300
January 12 · 8 min
300 - From Vibe coding to Software engineering
Fragmented is changing. New direction, new cohost. Kaushik explains the pivot from Android to AI development and introduces Iury Souza. From vibe coding to software engineering — one episode at a time.
#257
Mar 4, 2025 · 47 min
257 - Future of AndroidDev in an AI world with Vinay Gaba
Join us as we talk with Vinay Gaba, Android GDE and leading voice in Android development, about the future of the field. Vinay shares insights from interviews with top Android devs on their three-year predictions, and offers his own perspective. We cover AI's impact, evolving development roles, and crucial future skills. You can find the [full shownotes over at fragmentedpodcast.com](https://fragmentedpodcast.com/episodes/257).
#256
Feb 24, 2025 · 21 min
256 - Rapid prototyping with Kotlin
In this episode, we talk about the art of rapid prototyping across various platforms and using Kotlin tech to get it done. Also, how will AI change this? Listen to find out more. You can find the [full shownotes over at fragmentedpodcast.com](https://fragmentedpodcast.com/episodes/256/).
#255
Feb 18, 2025 · 31 min
255 - Data Oriented Programming
In this episode, we dive into the programming paradigm — Data Oriented Programming (DOP) and why making data the star can simplify your code. Learn how well-modeled data reduces defensive logic, prevents invalid states, and keeps your apps stable. We’ll also contrast DOP with Object Oriented Programming (OOP) and Functional Programming (FP), sharing practical examples, tips, and resource links to deepen your understanding. The [full shownotes with illustrations are on fragmentedpodcast.com](htt
#254
Dec 24, 2024 · 49 min
254 - 8× faster 5× memory savings with Dan Rusu’s Immutable Arrays
In this episode, discover how Dan Rusu’s pods4k Immutable Arrays library can deliver 2–8× speed boosts and 5× lower memory usage in Kotlin/Android apps. We first revisit the fundamentals of autoboxing/unboxing and immutability to understand their impact on performance. Then we hear from Dan himself on his library, motiviations for building it, how the benchmarks were calculated and much much more. Our grand finale episode for 2024. Hope you enjoy it! Full Shownotes at https://fragmentedpodcast.
#253
Dec 10, 2024 · 40 min
253 - logcat - a new look at logging with Piwai from Square
Kaushik looks at a new logging library from Square called logcat. He starts by seeing how the popular Timber library does it along with the benefits. He then interviews Pierre-Yves Ricau (Piwai) of Square, the creator of logcat, to explore its origins and advantages. Shownotes: https://fragmentedpodcast.com/episodes/253
#252
Nov 26, 2024 · 24 min
252 - Everyone needs a starter template
In this episode of Fragmented, Kaushik dives into the importance of creating your own starter template to streamline app development and minimize decision fatigue. He shares insights from his own starter template - Playground Android. Looking to the future, JetBrains has an exciting tool called Amper that might make all of this much easier. Kaushik chats with JetBrains’ Márton Braun about Amper, an exciting new tool that could revolutionize Kotlin & Android project setups. Tune in to learn how
#251
Nov 12, 2024 · 18 min
251- There's a new king in DI town
In this episode, Kaushik explores the evolution of dependency injection (DI) in Android development. Dagger has been the de-facto solution for DI in Android but there might be a new king in DI-town. He also chats with friend of the show and dependency injection expert Ralf Wondratschek for a final gut check. Shownotes: https://fragmentedpodcast.com/episodes/251

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