AI That ACTUALLY Ships: JSON, Voice Agents, MCP, and Software Developer Real-World Pitfalls
The Programming Podcast
Using repo trees, PRDs, and dev logs to preserve context
Leon shares tactics—markdown repo ingestion, PRD task lists, and dev logs—to keep LLMs grounded and avoid repeated work.
What do JSON and conversational AI have in common? They are the glue behind ordering coffee, booking flights, and talking to support. In our tests, about 1 out of 3 replies missed the intent until we enforced structured JSON outputs. In this episode, Danny Thompson and Leon Noel break down how to move from “cool demo” to production systems that route, escalate, and self-audit reliably.
SITE https://www.programmingpodcast.com/
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Stay in Touch:
📧 Have ideas or questions for the show? Or are you a business that wants to talk business?
Email us at dannyandleonspodcast@gmail.com!
Danny Thompson
https://x.com/DThompsonDev
https://www.linkedin.com/in/DThompsonDev
www.DThompsonDev.com
Leon Noel
https://x.com/leonnoel
https://www.linkedin.com/in/leonnoel/
https://100devs.org/
📧 Have ideas or questions for the show? Or are you a business that wants to talk business?
Email us at dannyandleonspodcast@gmail.com!
What you’ll learn
- Why freeform paragraphs fail backends and how JSON fields fix routing
- A simple schema pattern: department, sentiment, confidence, reply
- Confidence floors that trigger automatic retries before users ever see a response
- Context windows: why rules are read every call while context gets dropped
- MCP basics and how domain context avoids bad translations and metaphors
- Where voice agents work today (predictable conversations) and where they do not
- Practical tool choices for text, code, and voice workflows
- Real labor impacts, retention insights, and reskill advice
- Salary negotiation quick hits: the two lines that matter
Chapters
0:00 JSON as the glue + the 1-in-3 miss
0:30 Intro & episode promise
1:10 Quick defs — JSON / NLG / NLU / MCP
3:00 Why structured JSON beats paragraphs
7:36 Confidence scores & auto-retries
9:02 Sponsor
11:34 Prompts for image/video models that actually work
15:01 Context windows & durable rules
16:32 Repo trees, PRDs & dev logs to reduce spin
20:02 MCP in practice, local dialects & domain knowledge
26:03 Voice agents, predictable vs unpredictable conversations
32:43 Voice mode as a research partner & model picks
33:01 Jobs impact, retention stories & reskilling
37:10 Conversational AI 101, coffee shop flow to backend
40:05 Connectors & phone/drive-thru stacks (Agora, 11 Labs)
46:04 Real-world rollouts, employee retention boost
48:13 Call centers & debt collection case study
51:27 Predictable vs messy conversations — where AI fails
53:24 Career CTA, learn JSON, MCP, voice stacks
57:01 Ask Danny And Leon A Question
1:07:10 The Developer's Guide To AI
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