iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Adam Jacob

Marko Bevc @marko.social · 18/09/2026

Good episode where @emilyomier.bsky.social talked to @adamhjk.me about many things. Also a good reminder that we in #OSS we need to go back to the basic to talk again, share our passions and how we express our ideas through #OpenSource #community ❤️ Whole episode: www.emilyomier.com/podcast/know...

emilyomier.com

Knowing your Problem Space is the Moat with Adam Jacob | Emily Omier

This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Adam Jacob , co-founder and CEO of the Swamp Club.  The first thing we talked about was When To Quit. System Initiative, Adam’s second c...

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 14/09/2026

It's Monday, so we're back to read you last weeks AI news. OpenAI does math, Tailwind joins Shopify, Apple has a folidng phone, Anthropic says Chinese models are sketchy, Bending Spoons keeps buying companies, AI will kill us all, and native apps are back, baby. www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNrj...

youtube.com

AI News for September 14th, 2026: OpenAI does math, Miro gets bought, Jacob Coxon quits Anthropic

YouTube video by Swamp Club

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 08/09/2026

You can get it sent to your inbox every week, or subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform, over at swamp-club.com/podcast!

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 08/09/2026

It's another Monday(ish in the USA) - and it's time to read you the news. Nick Stinemates, Paul Stack and I are joined by our co-founder and platform engineering master John Watson: www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5uR...

youtube.com

September 8th, 2026

YouTube video by Swamp Club

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 01/09/2026

Our most recent example is how we replaced our traditional CI pipeline with agent attestation. Paul writes a great blog about it: stack72.dev/ai-broke-the...

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 01/09/2026

A lot of the hype-cycle around AI makes it sound like what's happening is we're abandoning everything we've ever learned about, well... everything, and just handed it over to the God machine. Of course that's not true - instead we're figuring out what they mean in context.

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 31/08/2026

It's Monday, so Nick Stinemates, Paul Stack and I will read you last week's news in AI and Infrastructure: www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNKu... We're joined this week by infrastructure engineer Jason Powell! Get the links and the show in your inbox at swamp-club.com/podcast

youtube.com

August 31st, 2026

YouTube video by Swamp Club

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 27/08/2026

What’s his last name, you think?

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 24/08/2026

We all need three point lighting

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 24/08/2026

You’re beautiful just as you are, James

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 24/08/2026

It's Monday, so it's time to read you last weeks news. We're joined by @monkchips.com this week! www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbwR... We talk about mental health and AI, Stripe buying OpenRouter, the dynamics of build vs buy, Linux, coding harnesses, and adding features AI hallucinated for you.

youtube.com

August 24th, 2026

YouTube video by Swamp Club

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Reposted by Adam Jacob

Autumn Nash 🎃👻💀🖤 @withenoughcoffee.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

I loved building a Linux distribution as an engineer, contributing to Fedora, and before that as a Security Product Manager. I’m looking for new opportunities that contributing to open-source projects, in roles like Solutions Architect, Forward-Deployed Engineer, Dev Relations Engineer, or Product.

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 19/08/2026

Of course. You should not be a skeptic - you should be convinced that 99% of the world hasn't built a working factory, because that's the truth. *and* that if you haven't built one, it is ridiculously hard to get good outcomes. Because that's all very true. vibes != factories.

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 19/08/2026

If you have questions about how to do it, that page also has a link where you can schedule time with me, and we can talk it through together.

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 19/08/2026

You don't stop being an engineer when you build software with a factory. You change your perspective from being focused on the implementation details to focusing on the machine that writes it. I break down how to build one in this talk: swamp-club.com/campaign/sof...

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 16/08/2026

So even if the shape converges, the details absolutely won’t. They will be bespoke in the end, assuming you want to produce software that’s interesting/good/unique

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 16/08/2026

That’s already starting - personalized desktop shells will be a big deal (see omarchy for the beginning of this)! But beyond that - a software factories job is to produce good quality software for a given domain. The shapes might converge (I think there are <12 stable CD pipeline shapes, fwiw)

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 16/08/2026

It’s literally so I can send you marketing emails :)

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 16/08/2026

Nope! But swamp is growing a community super fast :)

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 13/08/2026

Your software factory will be unique, because your software is unique. It's an expression of your creativity, your intelligence, and your community. We know of at least 9 different examples within the swamp community alone. It's the way. (Want more like this? swamp-club.com/podcast)

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 13/08/2026

You can get the links by signing up with your email or logging in to Swamp Club! There are direct links to the episode at swamp-club.com/podcast/2026... (where the date is the episode)

swamp-club.com

August 10th, 2026 — Infrastructure Frontiers

Episode 2 of Infrastructure Frontiers with John Willis. Industry Experts run down all the AI news for Infrastructure Engineers. Adam Jacob, Paul Stack,…

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 10/08/2026

It's Monday, so we read the news for you. www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5we... Paul, Keeb and I are joined by the amazing John Willis. We cover Steve Yegge's embrace of bespoke software factories, Pulumi, ConfigHub, ancient manuscripts, using AI for writing, and Cloudflare OS launch.

youtube.com

August 10th, 2026

YouTube video by Swamp Club

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 06/08/2026

OpenAI's recent price reductions bring high quality intelligence at a low price point at higher speed. Pick the right model for the right task. Swamp helps you do this by putting a workflow as the spine of the agent, and then choosing when to use which model. More at swamp-club.com/podcast

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 05/08/2026

We've not done a code review in months, and the industry move right now is toward plan review. In our experience, that doesn't last long - because what you really want is creative connection, and that's best done face to face, not in a doc. (swamp-club.com/podcast for more moments like this!)

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 04/08/2026

Sure! Will do tomorrow.

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 03/08/2026

If you read something interesting this week and want us to talk about it, just tag me in here and I'll add it to the list! See you every monday. :)

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 03/08/2026

* Kimi K3 on Hugging Face & Dario Amodei gets mad about distillation * Tobi Knaup thinks Open Weight models are AI's Kubernetes moment * Keith Townsend explains deterministic AI is an architecture problem, not a model problem * Mitchell Hashimoto starts a new company, Superlogical

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 03/08/2026

* Dan Lorenc phases out code review at Chainguard * GitHub launches stacked PRs * OpenAI reduces the price of 5.6 Luna and Terra * Paul Stack explains that best practices come and go, but architecture is forever * OpenAI releases Codex Security

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 03/08/2026

Every Monday morning me, Nick Stinemates, Paul Stack and a special guest will fill you in on everything that happened last week in AI and Infrastructure Engineering. We read the news so you don't have to. We're joing this week by infrastructure legend Sean Escriva, and we cover:

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 03/08/2026

Keeping up with the latest news and events in our industry is brutal - it almost feels like it can be a second job. That's why we're launching a new podcast and newsletter, Infrastructure Frontiers: swamp-club.com/podcast

swamp-club.com

Infrastructure Frontiers Podcast — Swamp Club

AI news for infrastructure engineers. Every Monday, Adam Jacob, Nick Stinemates, Paul Stack and a special guest break down the week on the frontier.

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 03/08/2026

I think it was at the Elephant & Castle in Seattle

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 31/07/2026

My memory of exactly what we said next is hazy, but I remember we had a long argument where I (we) told him what a piece of shit he was. I pointed out the dozens of things we knew that he did not, and he kept falling back to "I have a patent for the windows registry!" and we said: that's not a flex!

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 31/07/2026

Proving people like him wrong has led me to a fantastic, wonderful career, filled with the deepest systems thinkers on the planet. Cheers, my friends.

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 31/07/2026

He bought a couple pitchers of beer, we all clustered together, and he decides it's a good idea to toast us. So he says: "To the Systems Administrators - it's too bad you weren't smart enough to be Software Developers!"

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 31/07/2026

Happy Sysadmin Day! Once upon a time, our VP of Engineering decided to take our team of 12 out to drinks to celebrate us. Only he decided he was too busy to celebrate us himself, so he sent his right hand man.

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 29/07/2026

Had a great time talking with @thectoadvisor.com about building deterministic systems with AI. I discover more people who are converging on similar patterns every day. it's not use AI to run the process, it's use AI to build the system that produces the outcome. thectoadvisor.com/deterministi...

thectoadvisor.com

Deterministic AI Isn’t the Goal. Deterministic Systems Are. - The CTO Advisor

AI agents are good at producing outcomes. The harder question [...]

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 23/07/2026

This is the way. With swamp-club.com, we have comprehensive user acceptance testing suites that block production promotion if they fail. So merge away, and if UAT fails, then that becomes the next work priority. It’s worked fantastically well, because agents are great at building black box testing

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 31/05/2026

That’s how I feel about the learning argument - yes, we all learned to drive by first assembling our cars from scratch. There’s a beauty in that. But humans are built to learn, and we will figure out how to teach this too.

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 31/05/2026

But if I’m teaching someone the software domain now, I don’t have to teach them syntax. I can start with patterns. Vocabulary. Because my domain (software) is embedded in the machine, that’s often enough for them to make meaningful contributions! They can learn to drive without building a car

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 31/05/2026

The historic learning loop here starts at the bottom and works its way up. Now we can start at the top and work our way down. Today it’s solely possible by experienced engineers - I haven’t heard of anyone not deeply proficient in software who effectively builds a machine that builds the machine

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 31/05/2026

That’s the software domain still being relevant. But now the questions are different - how is this factored now? What patterns and principles have been applied? Can I shift from one pattern to another? Sometimes to learn that you look at the code. Sometimes you already know the shape.

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 31/05/2026

When do you learn the code is badly factored? When the agent struggles to add features (rather than when you did), or when you fix the same bug a dozen times. Without the vocabulary to describe how the system should change, the LLM can’t really help you fix it.

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 31/05/2026

Right - it’s stages, and maybe not a linear progression. Today (and maybe forever? Hard to know) the LLM lives in your flow. It accelerates your expertise. When that flips, and you’re programming the agent to produce the outcome - suddenly the learning loop shifts.

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 31/05/2026

Everything requires domain knowledge! If you don’t understand the domain, you don’t understand the problem (and therefore will be hard pressed to build software to help). No shortcuts there. The machine that builds the machine is another expression of the software domain.

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 31/05/2026

My suspicion is we will start teaching engineers differently - patterns and shapes first, rather than algorithms and logic. But time will tell!

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Adam Jacob @adamhjk.me · 31/05/2026

For systems of any complexity, they’re going to need engineers to help them. Because the critical sections remain critical, the knowledge of what’s possible, of how to actually build and run systems with stable architectural patterns.

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