Intro

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.