Compound Engineering: Manage Teams of AI Agents with Kieran Klaassen of Cora

Oct 9, 2025

Kieran Klaassen, CTO of Cora and a former film composer, shares his unique journey towards founding an AI-first startup. He delves into 'Compound Engineering,' promoting the idea of treating tasks as investments to boost efficiency. Kieran demonstrates live how Cora’s AI Gmail layer simplifies email management. He discusses the importance of capturing feedback patterns for future automation and why managers are key to orchestrating AI agents. The conversation is packed with insights on how to prototype rapidly using AI—truly revolutionizing work processes!

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INSIGHT

Work As An Investment

Every piece of work should be treated as an investment that makes the next iteration faster.
Capture patterns and codify them so AI can apply your judgment automatically in future tasks.

ANECDOTE

Claude Code Pricing Story

Kieran used Claude Code heavily under a bundle plan and estimated $6,000/month in token usage while paying $200 for subscription.
After he publicized the gap, Anthropic introduced usage limits shortly after.

ADVICE

Capture Your Feedback Patterns

Use AI to analyze your edits and extract reusable rules about how you work or write.
Feed those rules back into your systems so future outputs match your style automatically.

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Aydin and Kieran Klaassen (Cora) unpack Compound Engineering—treating every task as an investment so the next time is faster. Kieran shares his path from film composer to startup CTO and live-demos how he plans → prototypes → ships a feature using AI agents (Claude Code), then runs multi-agent reviews. They discuss why managers are primed to orchestrate agents, how to capture your own feedback patterns, and why there’s “no excuse not to have a prototype” anymore.Timestamps0:07 — “Every piece of work should be an investment.”2:15 — What Cora is: an AI Gmail layer that auto-archives ~80% and briefs you twice daily.3:32 — Launch notes & early user reactions.5:21 — The Claude Code pricing saga and “finding the limits.”8:06 — Compound Engineering defined (codify how you work so AI does it next time).15:01 — From “automation” to pattern-capturing systems; natural-language rules over brittle workflows. 22:03 — Demo kickoff: planning the “Invite friends” improvement inside Cora.26:11 — Rapid mockups from a screenshot + voice description; iterate in seconds.33:06 — Multi-agent planning: repo research, best-practices scout, framework researcher.41:01 — Human judgment on plans; simplify when encryption/perf add hidden complexity.50:00 — Feature running end-to-end; agentic PR + test flow; sub-agent code reviews.Tools & Technologies MentionedCora — AI inbox copilot for Gmail that prioritizes, summarizes, and drafts replies; batches the rest into twice-daily briefs.Claude Code (Anthropic) — Agentic coding/terminal assistant used for planning, building, and reviews.Monologue — Voice-to-text for quickly describing UI and generating mockups.Every.to — Partner/design/content hub Kieran collaborates with; also publishes his writing on Compound Engineering.GitHub + GitHub CLI — Issues, branches, PRs automated by agents from plan → code → review.VS Code (with Claude Code extension) — IDE setup for hands-on edits when needed.Anthropic Console Prompt Generator — Used to scaffold robust prompts/agents, then refined manually.Model mix for reviews (e.g., “GPT-5 Codecs,” “Claude Opus”) — Alternative model passes for plan/code critique.Fellow.ai — Aydin’s AI meeting assistant for accurate notes, actions, and privacy-aware summaries.Subscribe at⁠ thisnewway.com⁠ to get the step-by-step playbooks, tools, and workflows.