Hello, everyone. As usual, I have yet another amazing guest on the show. I think I'm just
like network filled with the most amazing people. 99 Dev Problems show here this morning
in the United States, but Tejas for you, it is a different time of day. So what time of
day is it for you? And I'd love to have you introduce yourself.
Yeah, it's 5pm here in Berlin, Germany. And I'm honored to join the show with you, Tessa.
I'm Tejas Kumar. I've been building on the web for over 20 years at places like Roussel,
Spotify, Zeta and more. And today I'm an AI developer relations engineer, data stacks,
where it's, look, it hasn't been a year yet, but it's the best job I've ever had. I mean,
I get to do research in AI, and I get to teach people how to get the most out of AI. And
we build tools to make that possible. So part of it is teaching people the tools, but part
of it is also like, Hey, how do I chat with a PDF like in a decent way? You know, so it's
just, it's a lot of fun.
That sounds super fun. Honestly, I have this like project that I'm like chasing down where
I want to put like, essentially like insights that I have into sort of like a agent or LLM
like model that you can chat with it. So I might have to tap your brain on that when
I start diving into that project a little bit more. It sounds like you get the beautiful
pleasure of experimenting and learning all of that while getting paid, which is like extremely
amazing.
Yeah. And it's also it's getting paid to also to learn because then I have to teach and
the teaching is a lot of fun. Like we get to do workshops around tools like astra, Lang
Flow, Lang flows are like main AI tool that I think it's a noble mission where we just
democratize AI. Like it's taking this thing that people are afraid of. Like there's a
ton of people who are like, I don't know Python. I didn't go to university. I don't know linear
algebra and they're like, I can never do AI. And we're like, no, no, no, you can't hear
here's Lang Flow. It's drag and drop. It's low code. Like there's nothing to be afraid
of here. Just and we walk them through it. Right. And so that's, yeah, that's the part
that I that I enjoy. And as a consequence, like it also just adds value to the company
because then people use Lang Flow and they like our capitalization is the removal of
their imposter syndrome. I think that is honestly, that is probably the best work that somebody
could do. At least I feel like, right? I know that as engineers, like, you know, we have
a lot of opinions and things that we like to do. But at the end of the day, I think
more than anything, it's, it's so clear to me, like how much developers enjoy helping
other developers alongside of like engaging in spending time with them. And so what a
beautiful way to give back to a company in like such an incredibly meaningful way, obviously
for, you know, bottom line and such, but being able to really like engage with your
peers like that. Yeah. And what's, what's especially rewarding is like, yes, meeting
and teaching developers, but I find even like meeting and teaching and equipping not developers,
but people who are like afraid of being developers, you know, people who are like, Oh, I don't
know if I can even call myself a developer. And we get to go in and be like, no, no, you
can believe me. And they go like, wait, but like, I'm using Lang Flow and I'm just dragging
and dropping some stuff. Yeah. But you're developing a solution. And they go like, what?
So I'm a developer. Yeah, you are. And that's, I mean, you can't, that's just so cool.
That is incredibly powerful. I had the beautiful blessing to teach over 300 women to code in
Minneapolis a few years ago, first to my career. Yeah, it was amazing. It was through
Girl Developed the organization. Previous to, unfortunately, they're shutting down,
of course. But that was, I know, that was the most amazing part of it was like seeing
the look on their face when they're like, Oh my gosh, I just wrote code. Like I'm a developer.
And then the like second most amazing part was seeing them go out and actually get a
job, like taking those skills that they learned in an HTML or intro to JavaScript class and
like expanding and then now they're getting employed. So that honestly is to be incredibly
rewarding, not only helping your peers, but also, you know, giving someone like this, this
empowerment and equipping them with skills they didn't previously have.
Yeah, I think a big part that continues like right now. So a lot, a lot of people are starting
conversations this year, Tessa, with, with the phrase 2025 is the year of AI agents.
Like this phrase is everywhere. And AI itself is such a, I'd say new, relatively topic that
sort of exploded in late 2022, right? Whereas things like a reactive been around for over
10 years, but agent AI is new, but agents even more so. And, and I think it's very interesting
that one, it's just not at least now it's slowly starting to become a well defined term.
But previously it was not like people were talking about agents and they were all kinds
of different like I remember I was at a meetup once and somebody was saying, Hey, we built
this agent and so on. It was just a like a custom GP a feature of open AI is charging.
It was a custom GPT with like a knowledge base. It was not agent and it couldn't, it
couldn't perform tasks, but this word because it was so nebulous and nascent was, was just
misused. And I think there's danger there because it can amplify the imposter syndrome
of other people, right? Like somebody says agent this agent that and then the other party
maybe feels especially, and I've seen this most commonly with women and people from minorities
who will feel like, Oh, I should maybe know what they're talking about. But I don't. So
I'm going to pretend, you know, and part of my job with Deverell is to be like, here's
the working definition of an AI agent from this 2024 Google paper. And also here's what
open AI just defined as an agent yesterday as they announced their new operator. And
so I get to like do this research study and then, and then really dismantle this imposter
syndrome of like, this is what an agent is. These are the sources. And now we can actually
teach you how to build them, right? Using Langflow and things that we make. But that,
I mean, that's the, that's the secret sauce is like, you take something that is so scary
AI agents. Oh my gosh, what are they? Can I make one? And we go like, yes. And here's
what they are, you know, I think like, like bringing, bringing order to the chaos and
people's minds, I think is so, so key for this role.
Mm hmm. I fully agree. I fully agree. Actually, my first developer advocate role came after
my girl development experience and all that teaching. And it's actually why I got the
role is that there was connections, people knew each other, they were looking for a
developer advocate, it was called an agency because I was it called like an agency and
community engineer is what the title was technically. And they found me and they're like, we heard
that you title these women to code like that's the kind of person that we need because it
was very education heavy. It was very training heavy. Same thing, right? It was like sort
of in that case, it was like cloud infrastructure and WordPress and people in WordPress are
like, what the heck are containers, you know? And so I'm like, Hey, it's not as scary as
you think, like CI and CD is actually really cool. Like, you know, and if you know anything
about WordPress as, as you know, or anyone else, right, WordPress can be sort of this
archaic way of building FTP, you know, sort of insecure, if that's the way we you build,
but it was just so fun to be able to sort of dismantle it doesn't have to be like that.
You can have more developer efficiencies and productivities brought into what is felt like
an archaic stack, if that makes sense. So anyways, totally get it and, and definitely
resonate and understand why you love it so much. Well, love, enjoy it so much, right?
Okay, so taking back just a couple of steps, I'd love to hear what your developer education
is if you have any official, if you're self-taught sort of how you learned to get into this field
to begin with. Yeah, that's a good question. It's I'm uneducated. I have no education.
I think that's just important to get out there. I did not go to college and I barely finished
high school. But that's because my background is, is, is colorful. Like I grew up very ill
and I was bouncing in and out of hospital is like, I'm just, I'm not a healthy person
by any means I am now, but I wasn't. And so I couldn't, I couldn't take the risk of going
to school. But as a consequence, like the other side of that coin is I, because I didn't
even attend like school school, like, like, you know, like from kindergarten through 12th
grade, I spent a lot of time at home sort of doing self education. I just, I had hobbies,
like I loved, I loved games, Prince of Persia Pokemon. And I was like, how do you make these?
And so I literally learned like game scripting. And then there was this pivot to visual design
where I've always loved this macOS Aqua style UI. They used to have these balls, these like
shiny balls, the clothes, minimize and maximize buttons on macOS used to be like shiny, you
know, with reflections and things. And I thought this was so cool. So I, I had, I had illegal
copies of Photoshop when I was a kid. And so I used to, I used to try and like replicate
that make glassy stuff, which led to graphic design, which led to, okay, I can design static
pictures of web pages. But how do I make them web pages, which led to something called the
slicing tool in Photoshop where you slice things up into tables that are HTML. And slowly this
became web design, which became okay, cool, but like, I need a database, I need, I need this to
be interactive. I need, and so from there came JavaScript and DevOps and the full, so it's
really just like, I'm interested in this, and I like to play in the sandbox. And it's, I'm still
playing in the sandbox like 20 years later. But it's, it's, it's like that. And so it's, it's
maybe a privileged position, which I'm thankful for, but I genuinely, it doesn't feel like work. I
don't, I don't think I've frankly ever worked today in my life when it comes to code and tech. But
I do like work when I deal with other people, like other people are nice. But there's just,
there's personalities and attitudes and you need to be political about things and need to get buy
in and you need to convince this stakeholder about that and quarterly reviews and okay, ours
like, like to me, that's work, people are work in the workplace. But like, like if I'm building
something like Langflow.new, if I'm building an agent workflow, if I'm, you know, like, this is
just the sandbox, I think it's so cool. So to answer your question, maybe in a longer-winded way
than, than you may have liked, it's all, my education is just playing in a sandbox. And it has
been that way since I was born, it's going to stay that way till I die probably.
I really, really, really love that so much as a three-time college dropout, not obviously for
different reasons, mostly just because my brain does not allow me to learn via lecture and the
format that college provided at that time. I love to hear that story because I think it's
beautiful. Obviously, you had some dynamics in your life that sort of forced that upon you in
ways that you couldn't control. But I think it's amazing that, you know, you found a beautiful
passion out of that because like, for anyone, if you don't follow Tejas, you absolutely need to
follow Tejas. I'll make sure that I put the links in the show notes. But he is, he's, you're just so
good about like, like tweeting and posting on social media and wherever you're engaging about
just like, you constantly say this kind of stuff, like how much you love building, how much it's not
a job, how much, you know, the technology and stuff that you really enjoy. And it's so, it's
empowering because for me, it's like, I have, I have gotten so pulled into the peoples and the
politics and being on the leadership side of all of that and only getting to do most of what you
just shared in my most recent roles that like, I have sort of forgotten and lost that like love of
just like getting your hands in there and just playing in the sandbox, like you say. So thank you
for sharing that. That was really beautiful.
Yeah. And this is why like working in DevRel at DataSex, I feel this responsibility of giving the
sandbox to other people. And I keep mentioning like Langflow and Agents. Langflow is a sandbox.
You know, and like, it's like, hey, if you wanted to do like a rag or an agent or whatever, here's a
sandbox. Let's play in it. And we don't yet have collaborative features like multi cursor like
Figma, but believe me, I keep wanting this and I keep like bringing it up at work because I think
if I can be in this literal like UI browser based sandbox with you guiding you through building an
agent or something or an LLM based app, like that sandbox, it becomes everyone's sandbox. And then
there's a, there could be a generation of people who maybe they like you, they don't like to learn
from like, or they don't learn from lectures. The current like mainstream education style doesn't
suit them for whatever reason. Well, they maybe don't need that because they have Langflow or
similar sandbox, you know, and so that I think is so profound. And, and this is, I keep saying
Langflow, which sure that's front of mind because it's my job, but there's also things like stack
blitz code sandbox bolt.new zero, like all of these tools that are really just sandboxes for the
next generation. Yeah. That's like a whole analogy of like a whole playground, right? It's like you
think about kids running around and playing and just living their best life. And it's like, exactly,
it's like, can you, can you create that while building technology, which honestly is like your
true essence? Like, wow, what a beautiful role for you to be in and playing because it's just so
contagious branded. Okay, so you get to do a lot of cool stuff in your day to day and you shared
some of it. In terms of like, what is maybe a day to day look like in like where you're bouncing
back and forth? Are you doing a lot of coding? Are you helping others when you're educating just
kind of what is that sort of traditional day look like? Yeah, I have a over the years, I've
discovered a really great productivity protocol for myself that works very, very well for me.
And the caveat here is everybody's different. Everybody grew up differently and has different
ways of working. But for me, I learned about the terminology for this from my friend, Michelle
Bacals, who if she hasn't been on this show, she probably should be. She learned this also from
someone else where they break up work into what they call offensive work and defensive work. And
have you heard these terms before? Has people mentioned this? No, no, but I'm so
entry. Yeah, offensive work is work where you move your needle. Like you have a task and you
make progress towards your task. This is not says nothing to do with anyone else. This is you
working on your feature or you're depending on where in the org chart you are, your main thing,
right? You may be a professional CEO brought into engineer and exit for your company. That's your
whole job is like, how are we going to IPO? This is what you think about is what you and so like
wherever you are, offensive work is you obsessing over your thing. Okay, defensive work is the
other stuff is the, Hey, we need to do this meeting about this thing that you probably don't
care about. But like we have to, it's, it's, you know, getting things audit ready for SOC2. It's
like all the nonsense like responding to emails. It's like being on the podcast that you don't
want to be on some podcasts you do want to be on like this one, but other than the it's like
doing all the stuff that you're like, I don't why am I doing and some things you just have to for
example, I'll give you a great example of defensive work for me. I have to do some visa stuff. I hate
visa stuff. I really, I being treated like a foreigner who's not welcome in a country. And I
need to prove my income. And, and, and like the United Kingdom is the worst about this, right?
Like they treat me like a terrorist coming into the country multiple times to the point where I'm
thinking, I'm doing you a favor coming here. I'm literally like people are buying tickets to see
this thing. You know what I mean? And so defensive work dealing with visa nonsense, offensive work,
building Langflow.new. And so I do. So that's one thing I split my work this way. And I've learned,
and some people will have to do trial and error, but for me what works extremely well is I've learned
that I'm able to execute highly intense bouts of focus and cognitive work in windows of about an
hour and a half, 90 minutes or so. Yeah. And it's really great because like I can, I can set an
intention and I can press the on switch. And like the whole world disappears, nothing else. All I see
is the sandbox, right? And for those 90 minutes, like no one's allowed to interrupt my phone is
somewhere else. It's like in the bathroom, which I will not go to. No, no bathrooms allowed, no
food, no drink. I'm just like in the sun. It's, it's, it's such a heightened state of focus. It's,
it's incredible. And it's a rush. Like it feels like, wow, this is amazing. So I do that for 90
minutes. It's, it's, it's very, very intense focus. And in those 90 minutes, like sometimes I finish
and I like exit the state. And I'm like, Oh my goodness, what did I just do? For real? Like it,
it looks like an entire day's worth of work. It's bananas. And I love that. And, and so I'm capable
of maybe two or three of these at two, I think three is impossible, like two, but also when I
like emerge from my focus hole, I, I just, I'm tired. Like, we're not trained in this is something
that I learned on like on the job, so to speak. Yeah, cognitive work requires demands energy just
as much as physical work or mental work. Like you could sit there and focus on a hard problem for
like two hours and you'll feel as if you've like been on the treadmill for two hours, you know,
just like very exhausting. And so after one, maybe two of these bouts, I'm like, offensive work, I
can't do anymore today. I'm done. I gave my best. I left nothing on the field. I really, I finished
the race. Well, I honored everybody. And then I've got like some, some extra time in the day. And
this is for defensive work, right? It's for the visa stuff. It's for the, like code reviews. A lot of
my teammates are some excellent, wonderful content creators. And I get to go review their drafts and,
and suggest ideas. And so that's defensive work as well. It's just like, Hey, I'm putting together
a CFP David, so my teammate is working on a CFP for a conference. And he's like, can you help me
come up with a title? I'm like, yeah, that's defensive work, right? Because it's not my thing.
Yeah, but sure, like I've already given my best and offense today. So I'm going to come play
defense with you. So that's for me, that's what a day to day looks like. And it serves me and my
team extremely well. Yeah, wow. Thank you for sharing that. I think that as like developers,
I think, you know, as we all know, there's tons of neurodiversities and different thinking minds.
And honestly, all of us think differently anyways. And I think that when it comes to our type of
work, it is sometimes hard to balance sort of productivity and like being in the zone and
then taking those kinds of breaks. And I know I personally struggle with sort of the prioritization
and like staying staying in the right place when it needs to just because there's so many
different things you could potentially be working on, especially in like a dev rail
type of a role, right? I mean, you can be putting on 10 hats. And I think that's the worst, right?
This is the great enemy of any professional. But I think the dev rail professional particularly is
is when when people things circumstances and sometimes yourself, your own lack of boundaries
and control will interrupt that precious offensive time in my case, those 90 minutes, like if I let
anything mess up mess me up in those 90 minutes, I've effectively wasted a day. It's bad. I do not
let anything like sometimes my wife will open the door and I'm like, no, no, go away. And she
knows me well enough to know that he's in his he's in his sandbox, you know. Yeah. But it's
I'm very protective of that because it's prime time you wouldn't give prime time to like tick
talk, you know, if you did, there's a problem. And so I think that's, that's for me, like
something I protect a lot. I'm going to honestly try that I have, have you ever heard of Ivy Lee
method? Ivy Lee, I haven't. Yeah. So it's different concept, but still supposed to essentially like
way back in like the late 1800s, this person went into essentially like the industry work at that
time, like a lot of industrial and they were trying to figure out how to be more efficient.
And the person who did this, I want to say his name is Charles Schwab, but I don't remember if
it's the actual like the company like the business banking Charles Schwab if they're related or not,
but definitely Google it if you want all the actual historical details, I'm just sharing my
version, but you essentially make a list every day and it's six items that you're you get done on
that list and it's prioritized. And so it's like you're supposed to work through that list in order.
And for me, my brain likes to procrastinate the difficult tasks, which are probably some of
those defensive types of tasks. And so I need it because it sort of keeps me in check. But I wonder
if there's like sort of a beautiful like version of both of these, right, where it's like you've
got two tasks that are like your offensive deep work. And then you've got sort of these four
defensive tasks. And that's how you operate your day. It feels like a very beautiful hybrid anyways.
Yeah, that's how that's exactly how I do it. It's exactly how I do it.
Oh, okay, but I'm careful around. So I do have lists and I allow myself no more than two offensive
bouts a day, I think, because that's also then just half the work. It's like three or four hours,
right? Yep. And I get like I risk burnout if I allow myself a third. I just know that.
But I'm careful around the use of the word priorities. Because this is a lesson I learned
from from Gabe Greenberg, my previous CEO at G2I. And also one of the best CEOs in the I have the
privilege of knowing quite a few CEOs, this guy is by far one of the best, absolutely incredible
human being. He mentions and he constantly used to remind me on the job and he still does, we still
talk, where he's like, Hey, look, man, the word priorities is a very new word in the English
language. It came like hundreds of years after priority. We were always like in history, there
was always one priority, you have one priority, like this is the thing you this is your offensive
work task, the thing you focus on. Yeah, priorities came about at the time of like, you know, the
industrial revolution and like when when everything got automated and oh, we can do more now. So let's
just do more. But the problem with that is we were really not good at context switching.
And so if you have like six priorities, you're giving a sixth of your attention to everything,
which to me doesn't work. I would rather give 100% of my attention to one thing and do it
extremely well with polish with with, you know, pulling out the stops with making sure it's
going to scale like I want to do it properly, as opposed to spend one sixth of my attention doing
it properly, you know. And so that's why the list for me of these six things would probably be like
one offensive to five defensive or maybe two offensive to four that that can work. But I
know I already know that on that day, I'm going to be very tired after work.
Interesting. Okay, very good to know. I'm going to try that. Because honestly, I think that I can
be very easily distracted as well. You know, if there's something, especially if you're doing
defensive work, it's easy to look away and be like, Oh, there's something else hanging out.
Hello, Rizal, Jason Alden and LinkedIn user that is not sharing their name. I am
help I'm glad that you're enjoying the productivity tips. Okay, that's really cool. So what are some
examples when you get into that offensive? I mean, obviously, it could be maybe creating a
tutorial, it could be actually coding something. Is that what those look like? Are there other
examples of like what your offensive work can look like? That's a good question. Yeah,
as part of my defensive work, sometimes I'm just on on X or Twitter, depending on how much you
believe Elon Musk is a Nazi. But I can call it X. Like sometimes I just scroll this platform,
and I see things and get inspired. I think that's also part of work, right, is like, you just get
inspired from somewhere. And I saw bolt.new, they have and stack, let's, as a company have a bunch
of like dot new domains react dot new belongs to code sandbox, but there's a lot of dot new stuff.
And I thought, well, data stacks, we make Langflow the sandbox for AI. And, and I want an
exp and I said, we should maybe own Langflow dot new, you know, so I floated this idea. And people
thought it was cool. And then my manager or we call them coaches at data sex Carter was like,
you know what we should do? We should, we should have Langflow, but, but like unauthenticated
because Langflow right now, like, if anyone wants to go try Langflow, like, we'll make you log in
first. And so you've got to sign with Google, which is like, why should I sign into this? I don't
even know what it is, you know? And so Carter, my coach was like, what if we just made like Langflow
dot new be this unauthenticated zero friction, just go there, start playing in the sandbox
instantly. And I was like, that's awesome, Carter. And so this idea came. And so at this point, I
already knew this is going to be an offensive task, you know, so that's that's how it comes.
Like, like I just get and so that's when I spoke to Carter, I was like, do you think we should do
this? Carter was like, yes, management loves it. Let's go. And so I was like, that's I scheduled
an offensive task. And so all of last week, literally last week, my offensive time every day
was was on Langflow dot new. And I shipped it on, I think it was Thursday, Friday last week. And I
just published a little video about it today. But like, it's the product of an entire week of
offensive work. And it's not an easy problem to solve because it's a serverful application. So
you've got to run it on it will not run on like Versailles or Netlify, you can't just like spin
it up there because they do serverless functions. They don't host servers. And then Langflow is a
server. So you've got to think, okay, Docker, I've got to do a lot of DevOps, I've got to make sure
it scales, I need enough memory, I need, do I use render, do I use flight control, or do I just get
like a physical metal machine and expose that to the internet? And there's a lot that can go wrong
there, right? And so it was fun, the offensive work was fun, because you get to spend like deep
focus on the DevOps side of this, making sure that if like 200 people create an AI workflow and run it
all at the same time, is it going to crash? You know, and how do we mitigate that? And then you
need to think about monitoring, like, how do we keep an eye on how much CPU and memories being used?
Then you think of alerting, like, how do we how do we ping people when something's down?
And all of this rolls into just a great, great week of solid offensive work. And what's the
end result? We get Langflow.new, it's published, it's great, people use it. I have, I have metrics,
I can see that we are about to cross 100 users today. You know, so like, yeah, it's just great.
And so to answer your question, that's that's how like we arrive at like schedule offensive work,
we get an idea, and we decide he's this worth offensive work. And then if it is, it goes in that
pile. That's amazing. I forgot that you work with Carter. So say hello to Carter, I haven't had,
it's been a hot minute since the last time I chatted with him. And it's, it was exciting to
see him come back into the DevRel world, because he is like such an amazing experience, like,
awesome leader. And so to bring him back into the workforce, I was like, yes.
It's exciting to see. Yeah, we should maybe get him on the show.
Oh, that's actually a good idea. There's, I started the show, like December 16th is the day I
started the show. And it was a very passive, I'm like, okay, let's just like warm into it,
like kind of ease into it type of thing. And now it's like, Oh, whoa, it's going people love it,
like the views are astronomical, honestly, like way more than I ever expected. And I'm not really
marketing it. So now I'm like, Oh, okay, I need to actually get more aggressive with like really
going into my Rolodex and starting to fill fill all the potential days. So I absolutely will bring
him on the show. Okay, so that's awesome. You like literally built something that is very complicated.
Obviously not small. Having to do many, many, many different skills. Is it, did you just work on it
last week or had you started it the week before? It's a complicated question. So it's, it started
with, it started with defensive work. What is it? Well, it didn't, didn't, didn't, didn't, didn't, I
take that back. It started with, it started with a design document. Okay. So it depends like what
you mean by started, right? Because like you could say started from that conversation with Carter,
and Carter was like, I wrote a doc, I wrote a doc, and then we like left comments in the doc,
and there were lots of ideas. So if we include that as the starting time, I believe that was
December 16th around, around that. So the same time you started the streams. Beautiful. But,
but the actual like engineering work to stand this up and host it and expose it to the internet
and make it scale and monitoring all of that, that took the week. Yeah, that was, that was just
last week, Monday to Friday. But it's because we did all of this pre-work before, right? It's
as we were thinking about like, what does it look like? What does a decent flow look like?
How do we host it, etc. So yes, in fact, that's really maybe a useful takeaway for people is
if you spend enough time like planning beforehand, the execution time becomes much smaller than if
you just like make it up as you go. Yeah, you know, and honestly, like, okay, so first I'm wildly
impressed, but I'm constantly impressed by your skills. Like you are just so intelligent and you're
so capable, but also like so kind and humble, like one of my favorite humans, honestly, if the world
doesn't already know that, you're one of my favorite humans. But I think coming back to that, like,
wow, that's a lot, right? But then at the same time, like what you were able to bring together as a
team to do that, if folks are able to start to create those types of documents and think in that
way, right, that becomes like v zero and bolt. And, you know, the product you built becomes like
so much more capable, because now you have started to spec that out. And that's something you can
put in, you know, some type of an AI prompt to be like, this is what I want to build. Even if
you're not going to fully build it out in bolt, like maybe you get some general idea or whatever
else, right, because you've you've put in in those work in details. Is there any tips or sort of hacks
or things you want to share in how you presented or brought together that document?
Honestly, no, I just because like, I think whatever I share is not novel. I just I started,
so maybe we can learn from psychology. There's a, I forget the name, but there's a trauma specialist
who wrote a book on like dealing with psychological pain and trauma. And, man, it hurts me that I
can't remember, but the product, the idea that he had was, and they tested this on people,
you just take 15 minutes every so often, it doesn't even have to be a day, it could be like three
times a week, four times a week, or even once a week, take 15 minutes and just like write down.
Doesn't matter if it's neat, like no one's going to read it, you just like write down your most
painful experience in 15 minutes. So you give yourself 15 minutes a day, you just write it down,
nobody cares how it looks, nobody's going to read it. And that's it, just write it down and
you're done. And if you do that repeatedly week after week, you just like whatever pain is attached
to that experience, it just goes away, like it doesn't even affect you anymore. And this is proven,
this was a big experiment done with many, many people and it just works. Like this is the way to
get over difficult experiences, maybe even from childhood, right? Like people who were bullied,
like they just write down in detail, they describe their bullying sessions over 15 minutes. And over
time, this loses its power. So now bringing that back to like this Langflow.new thing,
my approach was I'm just going to write, I don't care. I'm just like, I'm just going to write,
like word vomit here. And you know, word vomit gives you the basis to then clean it up and make it
nice. But like if you don't have, at least for me, if you don't have the word vomit, maybe I should
find the word soup, I don't know, like if you don't have that in the beginning, then you have nothing.
And I think for the early stages of a creative process, like writing a document, it's always
better to have something even if it's trash than nothing, because that's something can be refined,
but nothing can't be refined. Nothing is nothing, you know? So my process is we go from nothing to
crude, and then we refine, and then we polish, and then we ship. I love that. Yeah, I think it is
helpful. Like I know what you're saying in terms of like, it's sort of the normal process, but it's
nice to hear other people's process and like how they go through and think about that. And that
psychology note is amazing. Like there's Aaron Francis was on the show, I think not last week
with the week before, another great episode. And he had actually mentioned something about just he
just writes everything down. So when it's like, okay, I've got a lot to get done, I've got a lot
on my heart, I've got a lot going on, he just sort of dumps that right. It's a similar concept.
And then he's like, once I get that out, then it's like, it doesn't seem as scary like, oh,
okay, I do have to go take care of visa paperwork, right? And it's like, yes, I'm avoiding it, it
does suck to do it. But if I get it on paper, then it's like, okay, it's not actually that scary to
go take the steps to go do it. So that's kind of a culmination there of combinations. Wow,
so many productivity hacks I'm going to implement, which I'm in this space of like,
I'm in an opportunistic place of being able to implement these. So it's perfectly timed.
Yeah, I think I'm curious, like, I feel like productivity tips like this, that that I use
myself. I'm curious to see because I'm living, I'm living Tessa on like the forefront of this AI
wave, whatever this is, you know, and, and there's so much talk about agents and there's so much
talk about the end of work, like, oh, we're not gonna have to work anymore, because agents are
going to be doing everything. And pardon me, things like do these productivity tips even matter?
Like, will David like, what, what if the machines just do all our work? Will we still have to think
about like offensive work, defensive work? Or are we just going to like paint all day and take
LSD or something? You know, like, I don't, like, for example, there's, there's this dystopian,
maybe not dystopian, there's this vision of two futures could go either way. And some people say,
well, there's the way, or actually, no, what I wanted to say was this, this one. So yeah, this,
this one future that someone envisioned where the machines did all the work for people. And people
just didn't do anything. Or they just like, you know, pursued their dreams, whatever that means,
you play Fortnite all day, I don't know. But at some point, the people learned how to do the things
that machines did, they stopped knowing how to do them generations came and went and at some point,
like, for example, me, I'm not handy, I don't know how to hang up a light bulb. I don't know. I don't
know. This is maybe me revealing my own ignorance. I don't know how to like drill a hole in a wall
and find studs and put picture. I've never been handy, which is fine, because I have a partner.
But the point I'm trying to make is over generations, if the machines keep doing the work for us,
we may just forget to do stuff like how to do stuff, you know, we may just forget how to even talk
to each other because everybody's talking to an agent. And then what does that look like? You
know, so all that to say, like the productivity tips, I appreciate that we appreciate them.
But I don't do they have an expiry date? I don't I don't know if they're going to be useful in a
few years. That brings up a really, really, really valid point. Yeah, maybe the maybe the the real
productivity tip is learn how to make your own agents. And this is something. This is something
I'm really like, so I have to book some flights for travel for vacation. And I'm literally, I'm
doing this instead of booking my flights, instead of going on like Google flights or whatever,
I'm literally just writing an agent that I can be like, I need flights, I need them at this price
point, arrive now depart then, get them for me. And I'm not using open AI as new operator. I'm
like building this from scratch, just because I think that's the way like that's the ultimate
productivity tip, right, is to like be ahead of this this topic. I agree. You know, what's
actually really beautiful about that, like, you and I can probably have a good conversation about
this later is like, I want to create an agent that has sort of a general rubric or scoring
model for developer experience, like going into a site and it's like, okay, can I easily see what's
capable? Can I find the docs that I need? Does it all connect together? Yeah, see, I've got like a
scoring model that I've started creating already that I think would be just a really beautiful
tool because I'm doing it every day. And I'm like, did it, did it, did it, did it, did it, did it,
okay, you're missing this, this shouldn't be there. And it's like, it's something that I spend a great
deal of time on. And I'm like, can I get a score back from an agent that's at least a predecessor,
right? That's like a one to 10 or one to 100 or whatever. And then I can, I can tap in and be like,
okay, human brain, what should be done to improve this? Or who knows, maybe it can even come back
and say you should fix this. You got excited. So obviously you're into it. But you can do this so
easily. It's like right at your fingertips. Like, like this is, yeah, I know it's very doable.
More so with Langmuir because it's all visual, but like you can you can definitely do this. And
I'm happy to like walk you through that if you want at some point. It's not, you just need a
browser and you need an agent that can use it. This is not hard. Like we have both those things.
Right. Yeah, I know. Because when Claude came out with like, they're sort of like navigation,
right? And I know like build your own, right? Totally into that. When they came out with it,
I was like, Oh my gosh, like how, of course, this is something that we can do, right? Starting to
navigate, fill out forms, do some of these other things. So I would actually love probably the
link flow sort of infrastructure just in my current state of like technical chops. But then at the
same time, like I'm in a place where I'd like to build it and then like learn to maintain it.
Right. So it's like, that's how I learn coming back to sort of college and education. Throw me to
the wolves, throw me in a situation, force me to learn it by like fire. And then I've got it,
you know, so speaking to what you were sharing right about productivity hacks, I think we already
see that play out, right? And you know, depending on sort of like where, what game you were playing
and what code you were diving into. But like, even if we look at the modern JavaScript stacks,
right, like those developers in most cases don't understand the underlying infrastructure. That
was like not an option when I was a developer, right? I had to understand every element of PHP
and every element of my servers and every element of my DevOps, because there wasn't all these
beautiful tools and frameworks and things already created. So it's like, we're already seeing it
happen. It's just in like different forms, you know? Yeah. And it gets even scarier when agents,
like kind of like I talked about this dystopian future when agents do all of this for us, we don't
even know. Like I think because frameworks exist, a lot of people just don't know the fundamentals
of the web anymore. Like I wasn't a discussion yesterday on X with a person who was complaining
that AI operators can't read their website. And I thought why? And turns out their entire
website was rendered exclusively with JavaScript. So no JavaScript, no reading. And of course,
like AI browsers don't have JavaScript, they expect static markup, right? And so, and so I think
we just don't know how to build websites anymore already because of the frameworks that
some will output just JavaScript. I think with AI assistance, this will only get worse,
which gives us more of a more of an imperative to like preserve teaching the right things,
because unfortunately, LLMs aren't there today, where they teach the right things most of the time.
I think about the agent, I just wanted to respond to Rizel's comment here. Rizel, we can also build
that agent for you, or you can build that agent for your expense reports also with LLMs. There's
integrations with literally everything. Yeah, I think it's so just to circle back, Tessa, to your
awesome idea. We're doing a collaboration with a company called Tiny Fish. They have a project,
a product called AgentQL. They're a client of mine. That's how the playground became. Because
like you said with sandbox, like they were original client and I was like, you need a sandbox,
because there was like, I didn't have the aha moment of what I could do. And so I'm so excited
to hear that I love them. Yeah, and so they are instrumental to your agent, right? Because they
allow you to query the browser with AI. You can see like, find me the link to the docs.
We'll get you that element. It doesn't exist. Then your agent's like, aha, this is bad. So
Langflow plus AgentQL is basically your agent. It already exists in my mind and probably in
yours. So that's so cool. That's so cool. That is, I got that hookup. So both of those companies,
what a beautiful, beautiful synergy. It's funny because we did, if you look in the Built for
Devs Hub, so anyone, if you're listening to the podcast version, it's hub.builtfor.dev. Otherwise,
if you're in the stream, you can see the annoying little ticker thing at the bottom.
There's actually a recording in there with Rachel who does DevRel over there. And so her and I were
sort of digging through because I was like, okay, I wanted it for developer engagement. So something
that you and I have had many conversations about, can I go out and understand if someone's having
a conversation or if someone is sharing something? Can I scrape insights to better understand a
developer? And so that's actually what we were diving into. And so that sort of exploded all
kinds of different ideas of how to scrape. And then I started building a recipe app. I'm so
like, I'm so annoyed by meal planning, so annoyed by meal planning. But I have all these recipes
that I curate and create on my own. So I don't want to use these apps that are like, here's all
these things, like I have opinions, you know. And so then I was using agent QL to scrape recipes.
So it would go out, scrape the recipes of the websites and that the web, I have recipes all
over the place, right? And so it goes scrape the recipe, bring it into my app. So anyways,
long story short, agent QL is so cool. So definitely go check out the culmination of the
two tools because it's limitless really. If the culmination doesn't exist in your tool yet,
we should make that. I think that would be a fine con. And then you know what we can do,
Tessa, we can then use your tool on Langflow because it's open source and we can get a DevX
core just for Langflow itself. That's a pilot project, you know. And then we can go do Langchain
because that's also open source. We could do React. We could, you know, there's Aiden, I don't
know if you know Aiden, Aiden by, he's a developer, also someone great for your show. Aiden makes
million.js, which is a rendering library that's faster than React. And Aiden has been obsessed
with performance, I think more than the average person. Like he does this thing where he
goes on literally all the websites of like the Fortune 500 and more. And he has a Chrome extension
that he built that shows you like when your applications render unnecessarily and a lot.
And so he does this thing where he goes publicly on social media and is like shaming these companies.
He's like, look, Nike, your thing renders a million times when I type a keystroke. What's with that?
And they, and some of them actually fix it, right? But the reason I bring this up is Aiden is
somebody who's really, really obsessed with performance. And he, all of his work, including
million.js is fully open source. And so, yeah, I think that's sort of at the heart of what we want,
right? We want a better web and we want it to be open source. And like your tool, the DevX score
thing, could be kind of like what Aiden does for performance, but for open source projects,
so their developer experience, you know, you could literally just go on like Taurey, you know,
Taurey is like, I'm electron, but with Rust. And you could like, you could point your tool at the
Taurey project and be like, look, they're missing a change log here and help them improve.
Exactly. That's exactly. And for me, it's like, I want to decrease the time that I'm investing
in doing developer experience audits, you know, so it's like a selfish time saver. But I think it
is something that's really beautiful to put out into the ecosystem too, because often like when
I am talking to clients, it's like, it's one thing, you know, and I think some people can get a little
like, oh, there's some secret sauce here. But for me, I'm like, I don't really feel that way. I'm
like, hey, you should understand how I look at developer experience, because at the end of the
day, you still have to hire someone to go do the work, right? And so I think it's, it's a really
beautiful thing when we can share like how clear it is, like it just on LinkedIn, I shared convex.dev,
like I've actually don't have never touched the tool, but I just happened to land on it, whatever,
for whatever reason, it pulled me in. And they just have like a beautiful navigation. And so I
think that level of sort of sharing and understanding like what developers need and what that experience
could look like, I think it's just such a such a fruitful end result. So okay, so when are we
going to build this result? You want to come on and help us build it? We need I need to do more of
that. I don't know if you want, I don't know if you want to build it in public, but if you did
want to build in public, I would easily build this with you. I think it's a great, great use case.
Yeah, I would absolutely love to build it in public. Like I said, I don't have any secrets,
like I think whatever I feel is the sort of benchmark, I think the more we can crowdsource it,
so folks could be like, but I care about this in developer experience, the better, because then I
think then that can make for a much greater and more fruitful benchmark at the end of the day.
That sounds awesome. It sounds like built for dev x data stacks, let's get the Slack channel going.
That's so well, let's do it. Yes, let's absolutely do it. Okay, this is happening. So anyone listening,
you'll see this in the community future. So go sign up hub dot built forward dot dev,
we'll make sure that we get that out there. Okay, so we've talked about so many things.
And I'm like nearing the end of our time, but I could similar to others continue to talk to you
for hours because you are fabulous. Yes, Resell, I will definitely bring Aiden on. Honestly,
I have a client who is like hyper focused on performance. So I want to get Aiden's opinion
on that tool specifically actually. So I have many reasons to reach out to Aiden now. So
watch out, Aiden, I'm coming for you. One of the questions I like to ask everyone is how they get
unstuck. And I feel like you will have some very straightforward, but potentially liberating ways
that you potentially think about getting unstuck. So I would love to hear if you're ever stuck with
the work people stuff, or if you're ever, you know, stuck in the technology side of things and
sort of what are your steps to get through that and get unstuck? Good question. I'm,
I'm not neurotypical. I think I actually think nobody's neurotypical. I think neurotypical is
a lie by the evil media. But I think everybody's, I think neurotypicality is just not a thing.
And so my flavor of neurodivergence, it leans close to ADHD. I don't think I have ADHD per se,
textbook, but, but I do work that way in that like, I'll hyper focus on things. I'll also be
distractible. But usually when there's like pressure, I do good. Like I'll finish. So what
unsticks me is like somebody literally like pointing a knife at me and is like, I'm a,
I'm a, I'm a, this doesn't happen, but it has to feel like, you know, um, yeah, I think a good
example of, I don't want to shout out my colleagues who like, they keep coming to me with this visa
stuff, which I, I, I praise the Lord for them because if, if they didn't die, I would just never
have a visa. My US visa expires this year. And with the new administration, I don't even know if I'm
going to come back, but like it's, they, they, they, they keep emailing me about it. And in the
moment it is irritating to me, I will say that, but it's, it's, it's good that they do that because
then I actually finish the process. And so what unsticks me is pressure. And sometimes that pressure
is external and I thank God for it. But there's also times where I'm able to manufacture my own
pressure. Like I'll self impose deadlines. Um, and this helps me unstick. Like for example, I,
I highly value integrity and by integrity, I mean, meaning what I say and saying what I mean.
And so I myself will tell my coach, I'll be like, so it's Monday on Friday, I'm going to ship line
flow.new and, and, and damn, what did I just do to myself? You know? And so that's just me,
like unsticking myself is like setting these, um, somewhat unrealistic deadlines. Um, thankfully,
like if I fail, there's grace, you know? Um, but that helps unstick me a lot is just,
and, and also to be fair, setting the, in my case, the 90 minute focus window is also a version of
that where I literally tell myself, look, I have 90 minutes to make a progress on this offensive
task. If I don't, I've failed and I, it feels like a fundamental failure to me. It feels like sin.
It's not, it's not a light. Oh, it's okay. I'll try again tomorrow. It's like, no, I have failed.
Like it's bad. Yeah. Like I feel, I feel the weight of it when I don't successfully complete my,
um, you know, 90 minute work about, right? And so, um, for me, that 90 minutes is also a forcing,
it's a deadline to unstick myself. Yeah. And so once I start, I'm effectively already unstuck
because the sense of urgency to finish this thing within the timeframe is, is real. Um, I, I tend to
be more like stuck in a negative way when, when it's, uh, when I don't even start, this is like,
you know what I mean? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. That's for me difficult. Like for example, the visa thing
is, is, is something like that where I, I let myself get stuck because I don't even want to
approach it because it's so one difficult, but two just painful, just thinking like they,
they think I'm going to come here and be an illegal immigrant. I don't like it. You know,
and, and, and maybe they don't write, but there's just enough past experience where that's
been, there's evidence of that. Put it that way. Um, and so I just don't like approaching the subject
for it. And so I don't really have like a, uh, something that works 100% of the time to
unstick myself in those cases. I'd love to know, do you have anything to unstick yourself in such
cases? No, I'm the same exact way. My brain thinks the same way. So I know, but if we can find one,
that would be amazing. I will say that Aaron's suggestion of writing everything down did help
because it made it feel like, okay, it's annoying, but it's not that difficult to go chase it down.
Sure. I have to go do it, but it's like, okay, I can get it done. I will say this. One thing that
helps me. So I have maybe not 10 out of 10 times, but like four out of 10 times succeeded in
unstick myself from these kinds of things. Um, and what helps me in those cases is to just force it
to like, you know, I've seen, I'm a man and I've seen my fellow men do like the dumbest things
just because it's like cool, especially when you're younger. Like I've seen guys do like,
there's a red hot like branding iron and they're like, just brand me, dude, just brand me right
here. Do it man. And it's like, and I'm like, why, why do you want that? But I don't know. It's like,
it's like a bravado thing or something, but they, they like, just do it. Just get it over with. I'm
so ready. Oh, and they, they force it. You know, they, they, they literally like, it's going to hurt,
but yeah, I'm going to feel like a man, you know, this kind of thing. Um, yeah, that helps me unstick
myself from things that I'm afraid of is to brace bracing. That's the thing is to be like, this is
going to suck, but I'm going to do this so hard. And then it's going to be over. Like that unsticks
me a lot. And I think the more you practice that skill, or at least for me, the more I practice
that skill, the better it comes to. So how then do I practice this skill? It's the, um, this will
make me, people will not like me after I say this, I think, but it's the, it's the cold plunge. It's
the ice bath. This thing is crazy, Tessa. Like it really, like I'm scared to go in, but after I do,
it makes me brave and it makes me be like, you know what, that was extremely painful, but look,
I'm out and I'm warm. So like, let's go do this visa thing. You know, yes, yes. Cold exposure is,
is a real, um, unsticker for like the scary stuff that I procrastinate on.
Yeah. That actually not to like, you know, be weird about anything here, but like that's childbirth,
I feel like, and I think like you go into it and it's like, you know, I've had four kids, right?
First time I was like, Oh, well, just, you know, it is what it is. And I realized how incredibly
painful it is. Like excruciatingly, like nothing I've ever imagined in my entire life.
Three more kids. I'm like, okay, I have to have that approach, right? It's like, I'm going to do this
because I knew what that feeling was like at the end, like when I got to hold my baby. And so
it's very much like that. So I will harness my inner like brave warrior woman to, um, to sort of,
you know, manifest that energy, I think, to get it done because I do, I do agree. Um, I'm really
curious. There is a, it's called motivation code and it's essentially, it's very similar to some
of these personality tests. But I personally really think it's like the only one that matters.
Because what it does is it helps you find your motivation. And so I'm an achiever and I have
the same exact mentality. I have this like win or lose mentality. And it's not that I have to like
win every game or win every video game or win at playing cards or win in that way. But it's
whatever objectives I set for myself to go do. Like if I don't get those done, similar to your 90
minutes, Hey, this is what I have to get done. I feel the same way. It's like this, this like
immense sin, this failure that like can actually like really take me down if I let it, but it also
can like fuel me to be incredibly successful. Um, and it sounds very relatable to that. So I'm,
I'm really curious if you're also an achiever because there's a lot of different sort of, um,
pieces that go into that and how you think about things. And, um, yeah, it's just a beautiful
sort of dimension and personality breakdown. Cause when you bring the right people together,
those people win, and then you've got people that do sort of the other pieces and it just
makes this beautiful, beautiful round team. All right. Well, this has been an amazing conversation.
Um, how can people find you? It sounds like they should go check out link flow to throw them the
URL again, make sure I don't, don't screw that up, but I would love for folks to really go and
find you and what you're working on and find some of this awesome goodness that we've, we've
chatted about. Yeah. Um, I'm on X at Tejas Kumar underscore. Good luck spilling that. It's an Indian
name. Um, but I'm just going to my website, Tejas.js. For me, and then for the things I'm
working on here, Langflow, Langflow is awesome. Lang, like language and flow, like rhythm and flow.
Langflow.new is how you can build your first agent, literally, like if you've never built an AI agent
before, um, Langflow.new is a sandbox where you can go there. There's a tutorial, like here's how
you build an agent and you actually build an agent. And we also like define what an agent is.
And all of it's just, it's, it's this resource that I think is going to be helpful for people in
what people are calling the year of agents. So, um, Langflow and also, you know, data stacks,
I work there. We, we really just want to democratize AI for everybody and make it accessible. We
build tools to do that. Um, we have a vector database called astroTV and Langflow and they're
all, they're all useful, but fundamentally, at least the most important part of the work to me is,
is to, um, make sure that people aren't left out and that people learn what they want to learn
and are able to really have the careers they want and the lives they want. Because frankly,
I have that. I have the career I want. I have the life that I want. Um, and it's, it's a really great
place to be. I'm one of the happiest people in the entire world. Um, except when I'm losing it
fortnight, but I, you know, and I think it's just so cool that I even get to play fortnight,
you know, with my family and like it's, it's so cool. So I just want people to have that as well.
So yeah, yeah. Oh, I love that so much. Honestly, I need to harness my intertages more like just,
I live the best life too. And even though running a business is difficult and there are challenges,
like I wouldn't trade it for anything. And so, um, I love to hear that. I think if we go out on a note
here, like live your best life, be happy about the challenges that you get to face, even if they
kind of suck like visas and other annoying, procrastinatable tasks. Uh, thank you so much
for being on the show. It's been a fabulous conversation and I cannot wait until we all
get together and build this DX agent because it's the world needs it. And it's going to be super
cool. Let's do it. Yeah. All right. I hope everyone has a fabulous day. Happy Friday, y'all.