Day Two DevOps D2DO279: Herding the Agentic Geese
Aug 13, 2025
Ian Douglas, a seasoned engineer at Block with 30 years in tech, and Rizel Scarlett, a developer advocate and tech lead, discuss their innovative AI agent, Goose. They explore concepts like 'vibe coding,' balancing AI assistance with developer responsibility to enhance collaboration. Their conversation covers the role of AI in DevOps for monitoring workflows and ensuring accountability. They also highlight the significance of Goose Recipes for effective project management and teamwork, revolutionizing how developers interact with AI tools.
AI Snips
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Transcript
Episode notes
Turn Prompts Into Roles And Constraints
- Effective AI use requires expanding prompts into roles and constraints so the model asks the right questions.
- Ian Douglas recommends making AI play senior dev, PM, and security lead to surface missing context.
Peanut Butter Jar Example For Literal Prompts
- Kyler recounts a peanut butter jar school exercise to show literal following of instructions.
- Ian Douglas and Rizel Scarlett compare that to how AI follows prompts too literally.
Save, Refine, And Reuse Prompt Files
- Store and refine long prompts in files and reuse them rather than retyping each session.
- Ian Douglas suggests iteratively refining a prompt, saving it, then asking the agent to break work into actionable tasks.