The New Stack Podcast Sentry Founder: AI Patch Generation Is 'Awful' Right Now
Sep 26, 2025
David Cramer, Founder and Chief Product Officer of Sentry, shares insights on the limitations of current generative AI in replacing human engineers. He emphasizes the importance of human oversight in AI debugging tools, specifically discussing Sentry's AI-driven tool, Seer, which aids in identifying root causes of errors. Cramer also details Sentry's shift from open source to a fair-source licensing model to prevent exploitation while maintaining accessibility. His reflections on LLMs highlight their potential in coding, yet underscore that they are not ready for production use due to reliability issues.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Humble Origins Of Sentry
- David Cramer built Sentry as a practical tool he needed and accidentally grew it into a company.
- He values building useful developer infrastructure and enjoyed the serendipity of product-market fit.
FairSource Balances Openness And Protection
- Sentry switched from open source to a FairSource license to prevent others commercializing their work without contribution.
- Commits become Apache 2.0 after two years, balancing openness and protecting the business.
LLMs Shine With Linked Telemetry
- LLMs excel at pattern matching across large linked telemetry sets like traces and logs.
- That makes them very effective for summarizing data and surfacing probable root causes in production errors.