EPISODE · May 6, 2026 · 26 MIN
Autoresearch: Let AI Agents Run the Experiments You Never Had Time For
from Podcast de Itnig: Historias de startups · host itnig
Can AI agents do more than write code? David Cortés Fulla, Staff Engineer at Shopify, shows how pi-autoresearch lets agents run autonomous engineering experiments against any measurable metric.The talk follows a real developer pain: slow CI and long feedback loops. Instead of manually trying one-off fixes, autoresearch gives an AI agent a metric — like build time, installspeed, test performance, bundle size, prompts, or skills — and lets it iterate: propose changes, run checks, keep improvements, reject failures, and repeat.David explains how this approach helped Shopify speed up backend CI, generate multiple performance improvements, and automate the kind ofvaluable but boring optimization work thatengineers rarely prioritize over feature development.Agents used to code like us, but faster. Autoresearch lets them run the experiments we never had time for.👉 Subscribe to Itnig for more conversations about real business, startups and brands.🎙️ Want to join the Itnig podcast or sponsor one of our episodes? Appear on the podcast: https://tally.so/r/wo1Poe Sponsor the podcast: https://tally.so/r/3EERLNABOUT ITNIG: 🐦 X - https://x.com/itnig 💡 LinkedIn - https://linkedin.com/company/itnig 📸 Instagram - https://instagram.com/itnig 💌 Newsletter - https://itnig.net/newsletter/ 🌐 Web - https://itnig.net/ LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST ON: 🔊 Spotify: http://bit.ly/itnigspotify 🎙️ Apple Podcast: http://bit.ly/itnigapple00:00:00 Intro & welcome00:00:05 David introduces himself & his work at Shopify00:01:16 The problem: slow feedback loops in development00:04:27 First experiment with pi — tackling build times00:08:00 First results — 50% faster builds with parallel workers00:09:24 Live demo: real project walkthrough00:13:00 How pi researches, iterates and self-improves00:16:04 Storing ideas for future iterations across model versions00:18:30 The results go viral: trending on X, 1,000+ stars, 160+ forks00:20:15 50+ successful internal experiments at Shopify00:21:11 Beyond speed: running autonomous feature experiments in parallel00:22:32 Q&A
What this episode covers
Can AI agents do more than write code? David Cortés Fulla, Staff Engineer at Shopify, shows how pi-autoresearch lets agents run autonomous engineering experiments against any measurable metric.The talk follows a real developer pain: slow CI and long feedback loops. Instead of manually trying one-off fixes, autoresearch gives an AI agent a metric — like build time, installspeed, test performance, bundle size, prompts, or skills — and lets it iterate: propose changes, run checks, keep improvements, reject failures, and repeat.David explains how this approach helped Shopify speed up backend CI, generate multiple performance improvements, and automate the kind ofvaluable but boring optimization work thatengineers rarely prioritize over feature development.Agents used to code like us, but faster. Autoresearch lets them run the experiments we never had time for.👉 Subscribe to Itnig for more conversations about real business, startups and brands.🎙️ Want to join the Itnig podcast or sponsor one of our episodes? Appear on the podcast: https://tally.so/r/wo1Poe Sponsor the podcast: https://tally.so/r/3EERLNABOUT ITNIG: 🐦 X - https://x.com/itnig 💡 LinkedIn - https://linkedin.com/company/itnig 📸 Instagram - https://instagram.com/itnig 💌 Newsletter - https://itnig.net/newsletter/ 🌐 Web - https://itnig.net/ LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST ON: 🔊 Spotify: http://bit.ly/itnigspotify 🎙️ Apple Podcast: http://bit.ly/itnigapple00:00:00 Intro & welcome00:00:05 David introduces himself & his work at Shopify00:01:16 The problem: slow feedback loops in development00:04:27 First experiment with pi — tackling build times00:08:00 First results — 50% faster builds with parallel workers00:09:24 Live demo: real project walkthrough00:13:00 How pi researches, iterates and self-improves00:16:04 Storing ideas for future iterations across model versions00:18:30 The results go viral: trending on X, 1,000+ stars, 160+ forks00:20:15 50+ successful internal experiments at Shopify00:21:11 Beyond speed: running autonomous feature experiments in parallel00:22:32 Q&A
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Autoresearch: Let AI Agents Run the Experiments You Never Had Time For
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