Inside Dev Interrupted’s agentic newsroom and what it reveals about the future of tech media
Somewhere between a merge request and a microphone, Andrew Zigler became a journalist – he just hasn’t admitted it to himself yet.
Aside from being co-host of the developer-focused podcast, “Dev Interrupted,” and go-to-market engineer at LinearB, he also considers himself a knowledge-sharer through his podcasting and Substack writing. This is inherently journalistic, though Zigler was a bit hesitant to fully embrace the title when I asked him during our conversation whether he considered himself a journalist.
“I kind of have this unique position of being able to pull some of that stuff that stays deeply engineering focused and throw it into this other world, throw it into this journalism world,” Zigler said. “And so, it is fun to lean into that.”
With one foot in the engineering and developer world, and the other in media, Zigler is emblematic of the morphing roles of leaders in their respective fields who are becoming media powerhouses in their own right and running editorial operations of their own.
And in Zigler’s case, because of the demands of his role, he has created an entire agentic workflow to help fuel and guide “Dev Interrupted’s” news and podcast workflows.
The agentic newsroom
When Zigler first came on as co-host of “Dev Interrupted” about two years ago, he admits he was a bit overwhelmed.
“At first it was a really big struggle because I had no systems yet,” Zigler said. “I’d never hosted a podcast before, and I had to learn so many new things.”
This was also two years ago, when AI agents were still a novel tool. Developers still hadn’t quite grasped their potential. Over time, Zigler said he diligently cemented his processes and got into a groove. The timing was also serendipitous for him, since as the technology quickly developed, he was also able to become more agentically enabled.
Now, Zigler says he has built an agentic dashboard for the “Dev Interrupted” team that keeps them incredibly organized.
“I definitely bring all of my engineering ideas into the ‘Dev Interrupted’ podcast, which is very agentic under the hood in terms of the processes,” he said.
The underlying goal for the agentic dashboard, Zigler said, was to have a shared space for the “Dev Interrupted” team, which also includes the podcast’s producer, and co-host, Ben Lloyd Pearson. They have to produce two shows every week, stay in the loop on what’s happening at LinearB, track news trends in the AI ecosystem, and create content for their Substack.
The agentic dashboard helps the team coordinate all of this on a weekly basis — a delicate weaving of various workflows that help them make it all come together seamlessly.
“The dashboard itself is designed with the idea that it should be just as easy for the agents to use it as it is for us, and my agents should be able to be fluent in it,” Zigler said.
Keeping the human in the (email) loop
Even though agents have allowed Zigler and his team to become much more efficient, he still maintains a few things without their help.
“Email is still fully in the purview of me. Agents don’t write my emails, so email is always the best way to get my attention,” he said.
Zigler admits that his inbox can get very noisy, but does read through all of his emails, yet can’t take the time to get back to everyone. And he always pays attention to things that come across his inbox in case something piques his interest.
Zigler also says the best way to capture his attention is to pitch him a topic that he’s interested in at any given moment. And he’s usually pretty obvious about those topics through his social posts, his writings on the “Dev Interrupted” Substack or talking about it with guests on the podcast.
It’s a good reminder that despite all of the advances with agentic workflows, there’s still a human to link with on a personal level, and the ability to make that connection is something that can’t be replaced with an agent.
Keep up with Andrew Zigler’s work on Dev Interrupted, and follow him on LinkedIn.