Building with Agents Part 2 w/ Gerrit Hall & Dan Pollmann...

What this episode covers

Are we building useful developer tools—or just feeding an addiction?In the second episode of our AI tools series, Rex, Dan, and Garrett dig into the internal systems they've built around Claude Code: markdown session logs, pre-commit hooks, context management strategies, and notification hubs. Dan shares war stories from running AI on helicopters inspecting power lines (including the time an agent changed his root password without asking). Garrett walks through his approach to scaling ten concurrent projects. And Rex asks the uncomfortable question: is all this meta-tooling actually helping, or are we just tinkering because it feels productive?The conversation moves to local LLMs—Qwen, DeepSeek, Mistral—and whether a $15-20k home lab makes sense when Claude iterates faster than anyone can keep up. The hosts wrestle with context window limits, the ROI of refactoring, and what it means that these tools are specifically designed to make you feel like you're accomplishing more than you are.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How long is this episode of Signaling Theory?

This episode is 58 minutes long.

When was this Signaling Theory episode published?

This episode was published on February 5, 2026.

What is this episode about?

Are we building useful developer tools—or just feeding an addiction?In the second episode of our AI tools series, Rex, Dan, and Garrett dig into the internal systems they've built around Claude Code: markdown session logs, pre-commit hooks, context...

Can I download this Signaling Theory episode?

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