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Hangar DX Podcast · August 27 · 34 min

Why Dropbox Built Their Own AI Coding Platform

"The tools are so powerful that people actually want to manage them themselves. Everything is just moving up a tier of thinking.'" Chris Hodges and Kevin Altschuler from Dropbox's Agentic Experience team join Ankit Jain on the HangarDX podcast to talk about why they built Nova, their internal platform for AI coding agents, instead of buying off-the-shelf. They also discuss: Why owning the harness gives you leverage over cost, model selection, and the total developer experience, What makes Nova a platform rather than a point solution? What it takes to get security and privacy teams on board when agents touch your most sensitive data Where is AI engineering headed next? Agents that watch deployments, monitor logs, and message you when something's wrong 00:00 Introduction to Developer Experience and Nova 01:57 Overview of Nova: A New Development Platform 03:57 Challenges Faced by Developers Before Nova 08:34 Metrics for Success: Tracking Nova's Adoption 10:00 Capabilities of Nova: Tackling Toil and Flaky Tests 13:25 Comparing Nova with Existing Cloud-Based Tools 16:28 Nova as a Platform vs. Point Solutions 18:36 Experimentation with Goose and Future Directions 26:35 Building Reliable AI Systems 31:32 The Role of Orchestrators in AI Development 35:07 Future Challenges in AI Development 📫 Sign up for our email list for more podcasts, articles, events, and other updates: https://www.aviator.co/podcast ✏️ Subscribe for more videos: @Aviator-Co 🙌 Join a curated community of senior engineers and engineering leaders focused on developer experience and solving productivity challenges at scale! Check out our upcoming off-the-record online sessions where vetted, experienced professionals can exchange ideas and share hard-earned wisdom: https://dx.community/ Replace code reviews with verified intent AI writes code faster than humans can review it. Aviator Verify provides compliance-grade verification through spec-driven development. Ship faster with complete audit trails. https://verify.aviator.co/

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"The tools are so powerful that people actually want to manage them themselves. Everything is just moving up a tier of thinking.'"

Chris Hodges and Kevin Altschuler from Dropbox's Agentic Experience team join Ankit Jain on the HangarDX podcast to talk about why they built Nova, their internal platform for AI coding agents, instead of buying off-the-shelf. 

They also discuss:
Why owning the harness gives you leverage over cost, model selection, and the total developer experience, 
What makes Nova a platform rather than a point solution?
What it takes to get security and privacy teams on board when agents touch your most sensitive data
Where is AI engineering headed next? Agents that watch deployments, monitor logs, and message you when something's wrong

00:00 Introduction to Developer Experience and Nova
01:57 Overview of Nova: A New Development Platform
03:57 Challenges Faced by Developers Before Nova
08:34 Metrics for Success: Tracking Nova's Adoption
10:00 Capabilities of Nova: Tackling Toil and Flaky Tests
13:25 Comparing Nova with Existing Cloud-Based Tools
16:28 Nova as a Platform vs. Point Solutions
18:36 Experimentation with Goose and Future Directions
26:35 Building Reliable AI Systems
31:32 The Role of Orchestrators in AI Development
35:07 Future Challenges in AI Development

📫 Sign up for our email list for more podcasts, articles, events, and other updates: https://www.aviator.co/podcast

✏️ Subscribe for more videos: @Aviator-Co

🙌 Join a curated community of senior engineers and engineering leaders focused on developer experience and solving productivity challenges at scale! Check out our upcoming off-the-record online sessions where vetted, experienced professionals can exchange ideas and share hard-earned wisdom: https://dx.community/

Replace code reviews with verified intent
AI writes code faster than humans can review it. Aviator Verify provides compliance-grade verification through spec-driven development. Ship faster with complete audit trails. https://verify.aviator.co/

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