The Terminal as an Agentic Interface
The terminal has been a constant in software development for decades. It has remained largely unchanged while everything around it transformed. However, as AI agents have become central to the developer workflow, the terminal is emerging as a natural home for agentic development, and a new category of tooling is forming around it.
Warp is a popular Rust-based terminal and agentic development environment. The company recently open-sourced its codebase and launched Oz, its cloud agent infrastructure product aimed at helping enterprises automate software development at scale.
Zach Lloyd is the co-founder and CEO of Warp, and a former principal engineer at Google where he led engineering on the Google Docs suite. In this episode, Zach joins Gregor Vand to discuss how Warp has evolved over the years, why the terminal is better suited than the IDE for agentic development, how Oz approaches the governance and auditability challenges enterprises face with AI agents, and more.
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Making the Case for the Terminal as AI's Workbench: Warp’s Zach Lloyd
Zach Lloyd built Warp to modernize the terminal for professional developers, but the rise of coding agents transformed his company's trajectory. He discusses the convergence of IDEs and terminals into new workbenches built for prompting and agent orchestration, and why he thinks "coding will be solved" within a few years, making human expression of intent the ultimate bottleneck. Zach explains how Warp competes against subsidized tools from Anthropic and OpenAI, and why the terminal's time-based, text-oriented format makes it perfect for managing swarms of cloud agents.
Hosted by Sonya Huang, Sequoia Capital
Reinventing the Developer Terminal with Warp Co-Founder and CEO Zach Lloyd
For decades, the developer terminal has remained largely unchanged. But for Warp CEO and co-founder Zach Lloyd, reinventing this core tool is the key to unlocking AI agents for coding, debugging, and automating the entire development process. Zach joins Elad Gil to discuss how seeing this opportunity for innovation led to Warp’s agentic terminal for developers. Zach talks about the phases of software development, from coding by hand to the current "develop by prompt" era, and the coming age of fully automated development. Plus, Zach and Elad explore the deep philosophical questions around intelligence versus consciousness in AI models, and what it would take to believe a computer program is truly aware.
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Chapters:
00:00 – Zach Lloyd Introduction
00:32 – AI, Intelligence, and Consciousness
06:55 – What Warp Does
07:38 – Benefits of the Terminal as a Launchpoint
08:27 – Features Driving Warp’s Adoption
09:12 – Zach’s View of the Coding Market
10:27 – Evolution of Coding Development
12:45 – Importance of Senior Engineer Expertise
14:11 – Future of Security and Other Dev Tools
22:22 – Why Zach Focused on the Terminal
23:52 – The Future of the Model Layer
25:36 – What Zach’s Excited About in the AI Dev World
27:18 – Conclusion
20VC: The Startup Adding $1M ARR Every Week | Competing Against OpenAI's Codex and Claude Code: Who Wins | Why Gemini is Failing and GPT-5 Is Winning | Do Margins Matter in a World of AI | The Ugly Truth About AI Coding with Zach Lloyd, Warp
Zach Lloyd is the Founder and CEO of Warp, the next-generation developer terminal reinventing how engineers build and collaborate. Warp has raised over $70M from top-tier investors including Sequoia Capital, GV, Dylan Field, and Elad Gil. Before founding Warp, Zach was Principal Engineer at Google, where he led development of Google Docs, and later served as CTO at Time. He's one of the most respected engineering minds redefining the future of developer tools.
AGENDA:
04:14 Biggest Product Lessons from Rewriting Google Sheets
07:10 Why I Would Short Google: Leadership and AI Strategy
09:55 Comparing AI Models: GPT, Claude, and Gemini: Who Wins and Loses
17:04 Do Margins Matter in AI?
24:57 Adding $1M in ARR Every Week: Is Triple, Triple, Double, Double Dead?
33:58 How to Build Defensibility in a World of AI?
43:05 OpenAI vs Anthropic: Who Wins and Why?
44:25 Biggest Fundraising Lessons Raising from Sequoia, Elad Gil and GV
50:56 Why Sequoia are the Best VC
53:51 What Every Founder Gets Wrong in Fundraising
01:01:30 Quick Fire Questions and Final Thoughts
How Warp Went From Terminal To Agentic Development Environment
In this week’sThe New Stack Agents, Zach Lloyd, founder and CEO of Warp, discussed the launch of Warp Code, the latest evolution of the Warp terminal into a full agentic development environment. Originally launched in 2022 to modernize the terminal, Warp now integrates powerful AI agents to help developers write, debug, and ship code. Key new features include a built-in file editor, project-structuring tools, agent-driven code review, and WARP.md files that guide agent behavior.
Recognizing developers’ hesitation to trust AI-generated code, Warp emphasizes transparency and control, enabling users to inspect and steer the agent’s work in real time through "persistent input" and task list updates. While Warp supports terminal workflows, Lloyd says it’s now better viewed as an AI coding platform. Interestingly, the launch announcement was delivered from horseback in a Western-themed ad, reflecting Warp’s desire to stand out in a crowded field of conventional tech product rollouts. The quirky “Code on Warp” (C.O.W.) branding captured attention and embodied their unique approach.
Learn more from The New Stack about the latest in AI and Warp:
Warp Goes Agentic: A Developer Walk-Through of Warp 2.0
Developer Review of Warp for Windows, an AI Terminal App
How AI Can Help You Learn the Art of Programming
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Sharing the power of the command line
Warp is an intelligent terminal that combines AI tools and developer resources in one interface. Zach’s hope was to give more developers access to the arcane magic of the command line.
Connect with Zach on LinkedIn.
If you’re a terminal user, which one is your go-to and why? Let us know at podcast@stackoverflow.com.
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Back to the terminal of the future (Interview)
This week on The Changelog Adam is joined by Zach Lloyd, Founder & CEO of Warp. We talked with Zach last year about what it takes to build the terminal of the future, and today Adam catches up with Zach to see where they are at on that mission. They talk about the business model of Warp, how they measure success, reaching product/market fit, building features developers love, integrating AI, and the pros and cons of going open source (again).
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Featuring:
Zach Lloyd – GitHub, X
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
Changelog Interviews #487: Warp wants to be the terminal of the future
Warp.dev
Warp.dev/pricing
nvbn/thefuck
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Supper Club × Zach Lloyd from Warp
In this supper club episode of Syntax, Wes and Scott talk with Zach Lloyd about how Google Sheets works, why Zach wanted to build Warp, why did they use Rust to write Warp in, is Warp going to come to Windows, and more!
Show Notes 00:20 Welcome
01:12 Who is Zach Lloyd?
Zack on Twitter
Zack on LinkedIn
Warp Terminal × Next Gen Terminals — Syntax Podcast 579
Warp: The terminal for the 21st century
03:41 How does Google Sheets work?
GWT
13:38 What is Warp and why did you build it?
Introducing Warp
16:50 Why did you build Warp in Rust?
Rust Programming Language
Harfbuzz
Adventures in Text Rendering: Kerning and Glyph Atlases
23:20 How would you move Warp to Windows?
26:02 How would you run Warp on the web?
31:24 How are the blocks done inside Warp?
36:23 Would Warp ever add a shell?
40:04 Is better completion support coming to Warp?
44:42 Warp AI features
52:08 Supper Club questions
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Warp wants to be the terminal of the future (Interview)
Today we’re talking with Zach Lloyd, founder of Warp — the terminal being re-imagined for the 21st century and beyond. Warp is a blazingly fast, rust-based terminal that’s being designed from the ground up to work like a modern app. We get into all the details — why now is the right time to re-invent the terminal, where they got started, the business they aim to build around Warp, what it’s going to take to gain adoption and grow, but more importantly — what’s Warp like today to get developers excited and give it a try.
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Featuring:
Zach Lloyd – GitHub, X
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
Warp.dev
Warp on Product Hunt
Warp on Hacker News
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!