The GitHub Podcast

Cassidy and GPS dive into a round of AI hot takes to separate the extreme, engagement-bait opinions from the actual nuance. They debate whether developers still need to read AI-generated code, why “jobs won't hire you if you don't use AI” is more complicated than it sounds, and GPS's own hot take against the newest wave of paid coding bootcamps. From there they tackle whether skills have killed MCP, whether RAG is dead, and a borrowed hot take from their boss Martin: if you have to fine-tune a model to your code base, your code is bad. They close out with two open source picks: Pollinations AI, a generative AI platform experimenting with earning credits through code contributions, and Avian Visitors, a beautifully documented build log of a bird-listening e-ink display.

Links mentioned in the episode:

Pollinations AI
Avian Visitors

The GitHub Podcast is produced and edited by editaudio.

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In today’s episode, Cassidy, Marlene, and GPS tackle the ever-growing pile of new AI and agent terminology that's popped up seemingly overnight. They break down loop engineering (designing systems that prompt your agents instead of prompting them yourself), the Ralph loop that helped popularize it, and how squads and fleets let multiple agents split up planning, testing, and review work in parallel. They also dig into harness engineering (the scaffolding around a model that turns raw text generation into something useful), the newly coined “hill climbing,” and why forward deployed engineer might just be a solutions architect with better AI tooling. They wrap with a look at the spectrum between closed, open weight, and open source models, plus each host's open source pick of the week: Astro 7, the RAE API project, and Tau.

Links mentioned in the episode:

Loop Engineering by Addy Osmani
Ralph Wiggum as a "software engineer"
MCP
LangChain
Astro 7
RAE API
Tau

The GitHub Podcast is produced and edited by editaudio.

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The GitHub Podcast is back for Season 2! In the season opener, Cassidy Williams is joined by co-hosts Marlene Mhangami and GPS Peña-Siguenza. The trio revisits their favorite moments from Season 1, including Keeley Hammond's take on Electron and why “bloated JavaScript” hot takes don't hold up, Angie Jones's conversation on MCP and Goose, and the Tiny Wins team's work fixing the everyday "paper cuts" that make life easier for open source maintainers. From there, the hosts dig into their own winding paths into tech. GPS’ shares her journey from sysadmin to .NET and Cloud Advocacy to building a free open source platform that teaches cloud fundamentals (now used by nearly 7,000 people). Marlene traces her path from studying molecular biology to becoming a fixture in the Python community, and her early open source work on CuDF at NVIDIA, advocating for Ibis at Voltron Data, then starting the LangChain Azure repository at Microsoft. Cassidy rounds out the episode with insights to her front-end and React roots and her early days making tech memes on TikTok. Finally, each host shares an open source pick of the week: Mediabunny, Handy, and Cua.

The hosts' favorite episodes from last season:

Tiny Wins, Big Impact: Accessibility, MCP, and the Future of Open Source at GitHub

LIVE from GitHub Universe: Angie Jones on Goose, MCP, and the Real-World Future of AI Agents

Making Desktop Frameworks More Accessible with Electron

Other links mentioned in the episode:

Electron

MCP

Goose

Learn to Cloud

CUDF

Ibis

Langchain Azure

Mediabunny

Handy

https://github.com/trycua/cua

CUA

The GitHub Podcast is produced and edited by editaudio.

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In this year-in-review episode of The GitHub Podcast, Cassidy and Abby are joined by Helen Hou-Sandí, GitHub’s engineering manager for the Accessibility Engineering team and lead developer in the WordPress project.
They dig into Maintainer Tiny Wins, a series of two week long timeboxed improvements that save millions of developer minutes a day, from smarter PR reviewers panels and one-click merge conflict resolution to long-awaited WebP support. Helen shares how accessibility issues often spark broader UX improvements, and why fixing “just” a border color can evolve into deeply impactful changes at GitHub’s scale. They also explore the rise of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) as an open standard, GitHub’s new open source accessibility scanner action, supporting non-code contributors and AI as the “over-eager new contributor.
Whether you’re a maintainer, a contributor, or just love a good Furby-powered keynote, this episode is a love letter to the tiny details that make open source better for everyone.
Links mentioned in the episode:
GitHub Accessibility Scanner Action
Project Bluefin
GitHub Universe 2025 – Day Two Keynote
Unlocking the Power of MCP
2025 Octoverse Report
Refined GitHub Browser Extension
Git History Cleaner
Open Source Accessibility Summit

The GitHub Podcast is produced and edited by editaudio.

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In this episode guest host Greg Cochran from the GitHub Secure Open Source Fund brings together four maintainers who are helping secure the open source projects we all depend on: Christian (Log4j/Log4Shell), Carlos (GoReleaser), Michael (EVCC), and Camila (ScanAPI) to unpack what it really looks like to level up security in critical OSS.
They share how the Fund’s three-week security sprint, ongoing check-ins, and tight-knit community helped them move from “we don’t know what we don’t know” to concrete wins: hardened GitHub Actions pipelines, incident response plans, better reporting processes, and SBOMs that actually include dependency licenses. They also talk candidly about asking “dumb” questions in a trusted space and the ripple effect when one project’s security posture improves across its dependents. Finally, the group dives into AI security: using fuzzing, GitHub Copilot, and tools like the Secure Code Game both to find vulnerabilities faster and to keep up with attackers who now have AI on their side too.
Links mentioned in the episode: 
GitHub Secure Open Source Fund overview
Announcing GitHub Secure Open Source Fund
Inside the breach that broke the internet: The untold story of Log4Shell
Log4j / Log4Shell video (castle interview with Christian)
EVCC – open source EV charging & energy management 
GoReleaser – release engineering automation
ScanAPI – automated API testing & live documentation
GitHub Security Lab
Secure Code Game (GitHub Security Lab)
GitHub Copilot – AI coding assistant

The GitHub Podcast is produced and edited by editaudio.

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