1021: We got addicted to an AI model we can't talk about
Dax Raad, co-founder of OpenCode, joins Scott and Wes to talk remote dev servers, OpenCode 2.0, and why his team is “addicted” to AI models they’re not even allowed to name yet.
Show Notes
00:00 Intro
00:43 Welcome to Syntax!
01:22 Remote Development Environments and Their Benefits
Dax’s post
Latitude.sh
exe.dev
06:24 The Setup: Tmux and Long-Running Sessions
07:15 Brought to you by Sentry!
08:12 Integrating AI with Personal Projects
11:21 Open Code 2.0: Features and Improvements
17:15 Software Engineering Methodology and Design Philosophy
21:33 Model Routing and AI Integration
23:58 The Evolution of AI Models
26:23 Comparing Open Source and Proprietary Models
28:27 Cost Implications of AI Model Usage
30:27 Local vs Cloud AI Model Hosting
32:08 Navigating Claude Code and Third-Party Integration
35:40 The Future of API Access for AI Models
37:27 Regulatory Concerns and AI Safety
39:25 Tools and Techniques for AI Coding
Hex
Handy
45:15 Final Thoughts and Future Directions
47:33 Sick Picks and Shameless Plugs
Sick Picks
Scott:
Wes:
Shameless Plugs
Scott:
Wes:
Dax: exe.dev
OpenTUI
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Building OpenCode with Dax Raad
Brought to You By:
• Antithesis – verify your system’s correctness without human review or traditional integration tests – and avoid bugs or outages.
• WorkOS – Everything you need to make your app enterprise ready.
• turbopuffer – a vector and full-text search engine built on object storage. It’s fast, cheap, and extremely scalable.
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OpenCode is one of the fastest-growing AI developer tools around, surging in just a few months from roughly 650,000 monthly active users to nearly 8 million, and almost 1M daily active users.
In this episode of The Pragmatic Engineer Podcast, we meet Dax Raad, co-founder of OpenCode, for a discussion about the gaps in developer tooling that led him to build OpenCode, the advantages of open source, and why taste and engineering judgment matter even more as AI becomes a core part of software development.
We also cover how OpenCode turned Anthropic’s blocking of integration with Claude Code into a massive growth lever by partnering with OpenAI and other model providers, why GPU demand is becoming a bottleneck everywhere, how come AI coding tools don’t automatically mean engineering teams move faster, and also why Dax is personally skeptical about predictions for the future of engineering and work, in general.
I found this conversation especially interesting because Dax displays a healthy skepticism toward the benefits of AI, even while building one of the most popular AI coding harnesses.
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Timestamps
00:00 Intro
07:03 Dax’s path into tech
09:04 Early startup experience
13:16 Getting involved with open source
16:13 OpenCode
23:17 Anthropic banning OpenCode
30:34 From terminal to GUI
32:34 OpenCode’s business model
36:33 Why inference is profitable
39:11 GPU bottlenecks
40:54 AI hype
45:50 AI spending
48:47 Dax’s memo
55:41 Dax’s skepticism of predictions
58:58 Engineering culture at OpenCode
1:02:38 How building works at OpenCode
1:05:36 Taste and quality
1:11:32 Dax’s work setup
1:12:35 The role of engineers and EMs
1:15:50 Advice for engineers
1:18:12 Book recommendation
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The Pragmatic Engineer deepdives relevant for this episode:
• How Claude Code is built
• How Codex is built
• Real-world engineering challenges: building Cursor
• The AI Engineering stack
• How Uber uses AI for development: inside look
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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@pragmaticengineer.com.
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SST and OpenNext
Dax Raad joins KBall and Nick to chat about SST, a framework that makes it easier to build full-stack applications on AWS. We chat about how the project got started and its goals. Then we discuss OpenNext, an open source, framework-agnostic server less adapter for Next.js.
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Featuring:
Dax Raad – Website, GitHub, X
Nick Nisi – Website, GitHub, Mastodon, X
Kevin Ball – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Show Notes:
AWS Amplify
OpenNext
SST
Next.JS
React
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Supper Club × Next.js on AWS + Serverless with Dax Raad
In this supper club episode of Syntax, Wes and Scott talk with Dax Raad about building on serverless infrastructure, Next.js, and SST.
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Show Notes 00:36 Welcome
01:05 Sponsor: Sentry
02:05 Who is Dax Raad?
Dax on Twitter
thdxr.com
Tomorrow.fm Podcast
SST.dev
04:22 Why doesn’t AWS have a simple way to build on top of it?
07:46 What is Open Next?
Vercel
Next.js
Open-Next.js
10:25 How many people are involved in building Open Next?
11:14 Mapping Next.js to Amazon products
14:25 What is the edge?
18:56 Pricing in serverless
23:33 What about image assets?
25:02 Is the CDK a layer on top of something Amazon is doing?
Amazon CDK
27:23 What is terraform?
Terraform
28:50 What is SST and why SST?
30:54 Do I build with SST or on top of SST?
32:06 How do you do local development with SST?
37:01 What about databases with SST?
40:12 What about build pipelines?
42:28 What is Seed?
Seed
43:52 Any advice for someone learning AWS?
SST on YouTube
46:05 Supper Club questions
Neovim
Toyko Night theme
Nerd Fonts
Astro
TypeScript
Alacritty
i3
Cloudflare
Inside the Meteoric Rise—and More Epic Flop—of HQ Trivia
52:45 SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ×××
××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× Planetscale
Shameless Plugs Rebase.tv
@RebaseTV on Twitter
Tomorrow.fm episode on Rebase.tv
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