devtools.fm: Developer Tools, Open Source, Software Development

Paolo Ricciuti, Svelte maintainer and Main Matter engineer who builds tooling and created TMCP. He talks about Svelte 5’s signal-based reactivity and why explicit reactive syntax matters. He covers async reactivity and SvelteKit remote functions, security and validation. He introduces TMCP as a lightweight modular MCP server approach and explains custom renderer design and runtime tradeoffs.

Mark Erikson, lead maintainer of Redux and senior engineer at Replay.io, known for Redux tutorials and dev tooling. He discusses Redux’s evolution and Redux Toolkit’s simplifications. He explains Replay.io’s DVR-style time-travel recordings and how React/Redux DevTools integrate with recordings. He covers instrumentation, performance tracing, and a new Chrome-extension pipeline for easier recordings and AI-assisted debugging.

Ben Curtis, founder and CEO of Honeybadger and creator of Breakwater, a long-time Ruby contributor. He shares stories from early computing to building Honeybadger and launching Breakwater. Topics include designing developer tooling, bootstrapping a SaaS, product prioritization for dev workflows, AI’s impact on observability, and new models for distributing Dockerized software.

Jamon Holmgren, founder and CEO of Infinite Red and longtime React Native contributor who builds indie games, talks about coding since childhood and growing a remote-first consultancy. He discusses adopting React Native early, shaping remote culture and tooling, open source and community work like Chain React, and returning to game development with Into the Dawn using Godot and AI for prototyping.

Joel Griffith, founder and CEO of Browserless and former jazz musician turned engineer, built a cloud service to run headless browsers at scale. He talks about the origin story, deep operational headaches like memory and browser flags, practical uses such as scraping and testing, the BrowserQL tool for turning sites into queryable APIs, and plans for multi-browser support and sustainability.

Dana Lawson, CTO at Netlify and former engineering leader at GitHub and New Relic, discusses Netlify's evolution and AI-powered developer tools. She covers Agent Runners, the MCP server, and the emerging Agent Experience (AX) concept. The conversation also touches on how hiring and tooling adapt in the age of AI.

Fabian Hiller, creator of Valibot, Standard Schema, and Formish; software engineer and open-source maintainer. He tells the story behind Valibot and its modular, tiny-bundle design. He explains the Standard Schema effort to unify schema libraries and using schema metadata for AI. He also describes Formish’s framework-agnostic core and how it injects native reactivity.

Salma Alam-Naylor, Head of Developer Education at Nordcraft and former music teacher turned developer educator. She discusses visual web frameworks and Nordcraft's GUI approach. Conversations cover local-first software, syncing and AutoMerge research. Short, tech-forward takes on performance, auth, and versioning for modern web tooling.

Peter van Hardenberg, Director of the Ink and Switch research lab and co-author of the Local First Software paper, shares his unique journey from oceanography to tech innovation. He discusses the birth of local-first software, sparked by a train ride revelation, and delves into Automerge, a powerful sync engine that enables offline collaboration. Peter highlights the significance of user ownership, the technical challenges behind distributed systems, and his vision for a future where interoperability and decentralization are standard.

Jeppe Reinhold, a core contributor to Storybook at Chromatic, shares insights on major advancements in Storybook’s architecture. He discusses the shift to Vite for speed enhancements, ESM migration, and dramatic dependency reduction. Jeppe highlights how the Component Story Format has evolved, enabling better testing and tooling. He also unveils the integration of AI with MCP servers, allowing coding agents to interact with component libraries effectively. The conversation dives into how these innovations make Storybook an essential tool for modern UI development.