AI Tinkerers "One-Shot" takes you 1:1 with AI practitioners, software engineers, and tech entrepreneurs around the world -- the best of the AI Tinkerers global network. Each session includes live demos of real AI projects, detailed code walkthroughs, and unscripted discussions led by a technical host who explores practical applications and implementation challenges. As an AI builder, you'll gain actionable insights into emerging tools, techniques, and use cases, plus opportunities to connect with a global network of peers working on similar problems.
What Happens When You Hit Claude’s Limits? | Sam Hesson (Meta AI)
Description:
Sam Hesson — technical founder and newly minted member of Meta's AI incubation team — joins the AI Tinkerers One-Shot podcast for a deep-dive into the custom CI/CD pipeline he built to orchestrate parallel AI agents at scale. Sam became notorious for spending $50,000 on tokens in just two months while pushing the limits of what agentic development systems can do. In this episode, he shares his complete architecture.
Sam walks through his "Token Abundance Mindset" and explains why moving beyond single-turn prompting is the key to unlocking a fully automated, multi-agent development workflow. From structuring your codebase for AI readiness to running adversarial LLM judges that self-heal pull requests, this is one of the most technically advanced conversations we've had on the show.
Topics covered in this episode:
The Darwinian CI/CD — running multiple parallel agents in competition to produce the best pull request
LLM Judge — rubric-based quality control and adversarial agents for self-healing PRs
AI Dev Readiness — DB seeding, snapshots, and codebase prep for reliable agent testing
The Walk Flow — converting high-level conversations (via Meta Ray-Bans) into structured PRDs and Tech Specs
DevPlan — generating detailed, unambiguous coding prompts that eliminate guesswork for agents
Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction: Sam Hesson & Claude Maxing
02:17 The Alpha of 10x Agentic Systems
03:30 The $50k Token Spend & Abundance Mindset
07:25 The Walk Flow: Ray-Bans to PRD/Tech Spec
11:17 AI Adherence to Implementation Patterns
15:21 Playwright & AI Codebase Readiness
17:35 The Darwinian CI/CD: Parallel Agents
21:47 LLM Judge & Rubric-Based Self-Healing
31:03 Bruno API Client: Code-Like Specs
32:47 Self-Healing PRs & Agentic Graph RAG
38:40 DevPlan: Turnkey Structured Prompting
58:43 The Future of SDLC & AI Agent Adoption
Resources:
Sam Hesson on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/samhessenauer (http://linkedin.com/in/samhessenauer)
Nanome.ai (http://Nanome.ai) (Sam's former company)
AI Tinkerers: aitinkerers.org (http://aitinkerers.org)
One-Shot Podcast: aitinkerers.org/podcast (http://aitinkerers.org/podcast)
AI Tinkerers One-Shot is a podcast for builders and innovators defining the future of AI — going under the hood with the people actually shipping it.
29 Jan 2026
The Architecture of Vibe Coding: Inside Bolt.new's Stack
In this conversation, Eric Simons, founder and CEO of StackBlitz, walks through one of the fastest and most consequential pivots in modern developer tooling. After nearly seven years building deep browser infrastructure and reaching roughly $700k in ARR, the company reoriented around Bolt, effectively defining the vibe-coding category and scaling past $15M ARR in a matter of months.
We go under the hood of the WebAssembly-based architecture that lets Bolt run a full Node.js environment directly in the browser, delivering near-instant feedback and fundamentally different unit economics than cloud-hosted VMs. Eric explains the specific model breakthrough that made full-stack, one-shot app generation viable, and why this moment reordered who actually builds software inside companies.
00:00 Introduction
00:36 The 7-Year History and Pivot Point
01:01 The Original WebAssembly Vision
03:20 Near Bankruptcy: $700k ARR
10:49 Sonnet 3.5: The Vibe Coding Unlock
14:23 The $15 Million ARR Board Meeting
17:19 The Web Container/WASM Advantage
22:07 Bolt Demo: Full-Stack App from a Prompt
31:09 The Changing Role of PMs and Designers
36:23 Mitigating AI-Generated Code Security Risks
47:31 The Entrepreneurial Mindset
53:35 What Eric is Tinkering With Now
16 Jan 2026
Inside Browser Automation: Andrew Baker on Agents, Playwright, and Claude Draws
In this episode of AI Tinkerers One-Shot, Joe sits down with Andrew Baker—serial builder, former Twilio engineer, and hands-on experimenter in agentic systems—to explore the rapidly evolving frontier of browser automation and AI-driven agents.
Andrew shares how his journey began with simple scripting experiments and gradually evolved into sophisticated browser agents capable of handling complex, real-world workflows. One standout example: an airline seat selector that used browser agents to secure optimal seats for frequent flyers—highlighting both the power and the limitations of today’s tooling.
Along the way, Andrew breaks down the practical challenges builders face when working with browser agents at scale:
• Vision model accuracy and UI interpretation
• DOM complexity and brittle page structures
• Authentication hurdles and session persistence
• The real economics of running large-scale automations
The conversation then shifts to “Claude Draws,” Andrew’s playful yet technically impressive side project that brings the classic 90s app Kid Pix into the age of AI. He explains how he wired up a remote PC, streamed sound output, and carefully crafted prompts that allow Anthropic’s browser agent to control a nostalgic art application—brushes, stamps, chaos, and all. The result is both a technical deep dive and a reminder that creativity is often where agentic tooling shines most.
Joe and Andrew also zoom out to examine the broader ecosystem shaping the future of browser-native agents. They discuss why UI accessibility matters for agents, how frameworks like Stagehand and Playwright are transforming automation workflows, and why personal evaluation benchmarks are becoming essential for builders pushing these systems beyond demos and into real usage.
💡 Resources & Links
Andrew Baker: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewtorkbaker (https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewtorkbaker)
AI Tinkerers: https://aitinkerers.org (https://aitinkerers.org)
Andrew’s newsletter: https://implausible.ai (https://implausible.ai)
What you’ll learn
• How browser automation evolved from basic scripts to autonomous agents
• Why DOM parsing, vision models, and page structure still trip up agents
• How Claude for Chrome was used to control a web-based Kid Pix experience
• The architecture behind remote execution, sound streaming, and automation hacks
• How Stagehand and Playwright support modern browser automation
• The technical, economic, and ethical considerations shaping the future of browser agents
Chapters
00:00:15 — Introduction and AI Tinkerers Community
02:49 — Twilio Origins and Browser Automation Journey
04:50 — Building the Airline Seat Selector
07:51 — Browser Agent Challenges and Vision Models
10:44 — Stagehand Framework and Browser Automation Stack
13:28 — Claude for Chrome and Authentication
16:58 — Kid Pix Origins and Demo Setup
21:33 — Technical Architecture and Playwright Tricks
29:24 — Evaluation Platform and Personal Benchmarks
37:42 — Future of Browser Agents and Web Economics
Subscribe for more conversations with the builders shaping the future of AI, automation, and agentic systems.
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