The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
Automation at the speed of Swamp (Friends)
May 13 · 2 hr 26 min · 210.4 MB
0:00-2:26:00
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This week I’m talking with Adam Jacob, founder of System Initiative and creator of Swamp, about what happens when AI agents change the entire shape of software development. We discuss how he went from an 18-person team down to five and shipped Swamp 900 times in four weeks, why he brought User Acceptance Testing (UAT) testing back from the 90s, why software architecture (and domain-driven design) suddenly matters more than knowing how to write code, the live demo where I pointed Swamp at my Proxmox box and watched it write its own automation (blew my mind!!), and why he’ll never accept a pull request to Swamp, ever.
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Sponsors:
- Coder.com – Secure environments where devs and agents work in parallel. Open by design. Secure by default.
- Tailscale – Adam loves Tailscale! Easy, secure, identity-based access to anything. Tailscale deploys quickly and enables Zero Trust access to any resource on your network. From CI/CD runners across multi-cloud environments, to SaaS tools and infrastructure, Tailscale connects it all, seamlessly.
- RWX – CI/CD platform for high velocity teams. When agents help developers write code in minutes, validation becomes your bottleneck. RWX gives agents programmatic control, sub-second cached builds, and semantic outputs they can act on. No commit required. Just iterate until CI passes, then push.
- Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps close to your users — global Anycast load-balancing, zero-configuration private networking, hardware isolation, and instant WireGuard VPN connections. Push-button deployments that scale to thousands of instances. Check out the speedrun to get started in minutes.
Featuring:
Show Notes:
Featured
- Swamp Club
- Swamp manual
- Swamp extensions
- Swamp leaderboard
- Swamp on GitHub
- Swamp extensions on GitHub
- System Initiative
- System Initiative on GitHub
AI coding tools
Infrastructure and automation
- Chef Infra
- Proxmox VE
- QEMU
- Grafana
- Honeycomb
- Better Auth
- TypeScript
- Talos Linux
- Ubiquiti
- DigitalOcean
- Hetzner Cloud
- Amazon S3
- Incus
- Kubernetes
Developer platforms and companies
Related Changelog episodes
- Rebuilding DevOps from the ground up
- From Chef to System Initiative
- From Chef to System Initiative (remastered)
- The war for the soul of open source
- OSCON
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
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tailscale.comRWX
rwx.comFly.io
fly.ioCheck out the speedrun
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systeminit.comGitHub
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adamstacoviak.comGitHub
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x.comSwamp Club
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github.comSystem Initiative
systeminit.comSystem Initiative on GitHub
github.comClaude Code
anthropic.comClaude Code docs
docs.anthropic.comOpenAI Codex CLI
developers.openai.comCodex on GitHub
github.comChef Infra
chef.ioProxmox VE
proxmox.comQEMU
qemu.orgGrafana
grafana.comHoneycomb
honeycomb.ioBetter Auth
better-auth.comTypeScript
typescriptlang.orgTalos Linux
talos.devUbiquiti
ui.comDigitalOcean
digitalocean.comHetzner Cloud
hetzner.comAmazon S3
aws.amazon.comIncus
linuxcontainers.orgKubernetes
kubernetes.ioGitHub
github.comGitLab
about.gitlab.comBlock
block.xyzRebuilding DevOps from the ground up
changelog.comFrom Chef to System Initiative
changelog.comFrom Chef to System Initiative (remastered)
changelog.comThe war for the soul of open source
changelog.comOSCON
oreilly.comPRs welcome!
github.com
- 0:00Welcome to The Changelog
- 0:38Sponsor: Coder.com
- 3:46Reconnecting with Adam Jacob
- 6:39AI is changing what's possible in software
- 12:23Abstration layers are increasing
- 15:13How do I know if I did a good job today?
- 17:19What happens when key system contraints change dramatically?
- 21:23From a team of 18 to a team of 5 with AI
- 27:50The loop from implementation planning to user acceptance testing
- 28:30Why did you bring back UAT?
- 30:53Implementation Plan Walkthrough
- 34:30Writing specs vs writing design docs
- 37:17Swamp.club!
- 41:01What Swamp does
- 45:42Would you call Swamp an AI harness?
- 46:27Who is Swamp for?
- 47:09How would Swamp build automation for Proxmox?
- 52:08What capabilites for Swamp are you exploring next?
- 54:56Sponsor: Tailscale
- 57:31Why did you name it Swamp?
- 58:54How do you level up in Swamp?
- 59:57How do I get started with Swamp?
- 1:04:36Adam tries Swamp live
- 1:16:19What tools like Swamp mean for the future of automation
- 1:17:39Are there any limitations to what Swamp can automate?
- 1:18:41Nerding out on what these tools mean for the future of software
- 1:25:22Why Adam Jacob is excited about the future with Swamp
- 1:25:50Is Swamp anything like OpenClaw?
- 1:26:18What are some unusual things you can ask Swamp to do?
- 1:30:20Using Swamp to deploy software to different cloud platforms
- 1:31:47How do you convince people that Swamp is production ready?
- 1:37:55Sponsor: RWX
- 1:40:37What part of the software lifecycle will be compressed/collapsed by Swamp?
- 1:46:13Things are feeling pretty uncomfortable
- 1:50:32Adam Jacob's advice for navigating the future of software engineering
- 1:54:23Software development isn't dead. It's just changing very fast.
- 1:55:11Book recommendations!!
- 1:59:27Swamp IS NOT open to contributions
- 2:03:25How will agentic development impact team sizes?
- 2:09:44Speculation on the future of the software industry
- 2:13:08Building for people outside of Silicon Valley
- 2:15:46Everything is being reinvented. Opportunities are out there.
- 2:24:07We're out
- 2:24:45Closing thoughts and stuff