State of Agentic Coding

Armin and Ben discuss AI watermarking, model-provider politics, open-weight models convergence, chat coding agents, and what's going on with GitHub. They also explore the tension between vibe coding and engineering craft, and what truly agent-friendly programming might look like.

Agent autonomy, provider lock-in, and what coding agents actually cost once the subscription stops hiding it. Plus the terminal's comeback and the incentives behind free tokens.

Recorded in Vienna, Ben and Armin sit down with Mario Zechner to vibe-check Fable and GLM-5.2, unpack how RL and agent harnesses normalize model jank, and ask whether newer models are quietly getting worse. They also debate agent loops, trust and ROI, the rising cost of tokens and compute, and how to stay sane amid AI FOMO.

Ben and Armin mark one year of coding with agents, asking what has actually changed in real developer workflows — from terminal-based agents and prompt loops to the end of cheap token subsidies.

What happens when AI coding stops being subsidized? Ben and Armin dig into rising compute costs, security slop, acquisition strategy, GitHub cracks, and why coding traces may be the most valuable asset in the stack.