What Agents Are and Key Tools

In this episode, Alexandra Sunderland (VP of Engineering at Fellow) pulls back the curtain on how she runs engineering with agentic workflows that actually move the needle: background coding agents in Cursor that fix bugs while she’s in meetings, Claude + MCPs to query Linear and auto-generate reports in seconds, and Zapier pipelines that turn meeting transcripts into daily briefs, real-time project risk pings, sales insights, and even 1:1 growth trackers. The theme: make conversations computable, specialize agents narrowly, and wire every tool together so ops happen while you sleep.Timestamps1:11 — Background: 13+ yrs with Aydin; author of Remote Engineering Management.2:13 — What is an “agent”? Alexandra’s practical definition (automation + LLM).3:39 — Why specialized agents beat general ones (Sept 2025 reality check).5:25 — Cursor background agents via Slack VIP notifications—coding while she’s away.8:00 — Hackathon: hand-built dev productivity dashboard vs. Claude + Linear MCP.10:38 — Why use Claude here instead of Cursor: downloadable PDFs & exploratory insights.13:03 — Interface shift: logging into Linear/GitHub less; notify via Slack instead.14:21 — Plan: live workflows that leaders can copy.15:31 — Workflow #1: Daily Brief in Zapier (9:00 a.m. trigger → transcripts → CoS-style digest).18:00 — Slack example of the generated daily brief.20:22 — Workflow #2: Project Meeting Insights—real-time blockers & cross-team risks.22:00 — Prompting style (“best VP of Eng in the world”) and why it helps.26:40 — Idea: an “Alexandra agent” that drafts her responses.27:59 — Workflow #3: Sales call mining → bug/feature requests for Eng.29:14 — Next step: Cursor agents created via API—fixes ready for human review minutes after calls.30:23 — Rolling Cursor to product & success; non-engineers leverage code context.31:16 — Auto-drafting help center docs with Cursor that can browse.32:34 — Future: docs auto-update—or vanish into on-demand LLM answers.34:52 — Workflow #4 (WIP): 1:1 growth tracker—extract coaching, strengths, feedback into a living doc.37:41 — Sales coaching automation: enforce key phrases/objection handling.38:10 — Playbook: start with simple “yesterday’s conversations → insights,” then stack.39:24 — Next 12 months: tools connecting to each other, patterns across datasets.Tools & Technologies Mentioned (with quick notes)Cursor — AI-powered code editor with background agents (cloud-run) and Slack integration for async coding and fixes.Cursor Background Agents API — Programmatically spin up agents to implement bug fixes/features for later human review.Slack (VIP Notifications) — Marking the Cursor app as VIP ensures agent updates punch through Do Not Disturb.Claude — LLM used with MCPs to query data sources (e.g., Linear), generate PDFs, surface trends, and build ad-hoc reports.MCP (Model Context Protocol) — Standard to connect LLMs to tools/data (e.g., Linear) for live, permissioned operations.Linear — Issue/project tracker; source for ticket analytics (resolution rates, triage time, stage durations).Zapier — No-code automations; schedules, filters, formats, makes API calls, and runs AI by Zapier LLM steps.Fellow.ai — AI meeting assistant capturing summaries, actions, decisions; acts as an “AI chief of staff” across meetings.GitHub — Code hosting referenced as a UI Alexandra now visits less thanks to agentic workflows.Google Docs / Notion / Wiki — Destinations for auto-appending 1:1 growth notes and team principles.APIs (custom + vendor) — Zapier “Webhooks by Zapier”/custom API calls used to fetch transcripts and trigger agents.Subscribe at⁠ thisnewway.com⁠ to get the step-by-step playbooks, tools, and workflows.