AI Engineer Europe 2026 on TLDRecap ⏮️

Agents for Everything Else — swyx

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 21:10:33 -0700

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swyx

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AI Engineer Europe 2026

AI Engineers: Building the Future, One Agent at a Time 🤖✨

The world of work is rapidly evolving, and at the forefront of this transformation are AI engineers. Swyx, co-founder of the AI Engineer conference, shares his journey and insights on how AI is not just a tool for coding, but a powerful force for augmenting human productivity and reimagining business operations.

The Evolution of AI Engineer Conferences 🚀

Swyx has been a consistent voice at the AI Engineer conference, tracking the seismic shifts in AI adoption.

Replacing 12K LoC with a 200 LoC Skill — David Gomes, Cursor

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 05:00:06 -0700

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David Gomes

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AI Engineer Europe 2026

🚀 From 15,000 Lines of Code to Markdown: The Future of Agentic Programming

In the world of software development, we often equate progress with more code, more features, and more complexity. But what if the secret to building better tools isn’t writing more code, but deleting it?

At a recent talk, David Gomes shared a radical transformation within Cursor, the AI-powered code editor. By leveraging the power of LLMs and Markdown, the team managed to replace a massive, complex feature with a few simple instructions.

AgentCraft: Putting the Orc in Orchestration — Ido Salomon

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 09:00:06 -0700

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Ido Salomon

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AI Engineer Europe 2026

Level Up Your AI Agents: How Gaming Wisdom is Revolutionizing Human-Agent Collaboration 🎮🚀

Good morning, London! Ido Salomon, creator of Agent Craft, MC I, and co-maintainer of MC apps, recently unveiled a groundbreaking approach to scaling AI agent collaboration. We all know individual agents are amazing, but what happens when you try to scale up to 10, 20, or even 100 agents? The dream of 100x amazingness often hits a wall. Why? Because we become the bottleneck. Orchestrating dozens of “reckless employees” – as Ido humorously puts it – isn’t typically an engineer’s job. We need new skills, but these skills aren’t entirely new; they’ve been hiding in plain sight, especially for gamers!

What Do Models Still Suck At? - Peter Gostev, Arena.ai, BullshitBench

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 07:30:06 -0700

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Peter Gostev

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AI Engineer Europe 2026

Beyond the Hype: What Large Language Models Still Struggle With 🤯

We’re constantly bombarded with dazzling charts showing the relentless upward march of AI capabilities. Every new model release feels like a giant leap towards Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), leaving us in a state of awe and perhaps a little anxiety. But are we being too optimistic? Peter Gostev, in a recent talk, dives into the less glamorous side of LLMs, exploring what they don’t do well and why that matters.

Software Fundamentals Matter More Than Ever — Matt Pocock

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 08:15:06 -0700

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Matt Pocock

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AI Engineer Europe 2026

🚀 Why Software Fundamentals are Your Superpower in the Age of AI

Do you feel like your hard-earned engineering skills are losing their value in a world dominated by LLMs? Matt Pocock has a comforting, yet provocative message for you: software fundamentals matter now more than they ever have.

While many believe we are entering a specs-to-code era where we can simply ignore the implementation, the reality is much messier. If you treat code as a disposable byproduct, you fall into the trap of vibe coding. You run the compiler, get garbage, run it again, and get even worse garbage.

The End of Apps — Kitze, Sizzy.co

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 08:15:06 -0700

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AI Engineer Europe 2026

Hey, tech enthusiasts and productivity hackers! Ever feel like you’re wrestling with your to-do list more than actually doing things? You’re definitely not alone. Our speaker, K, recently celebrated his 34th birthday by sharing his incredible, decades-long journey through the chaotic, frustrating, and ultimately inspiring world of productivity and personal AI agents. Get ready for a wild ride!

The Relentless Pursuit of Productivity: A Personal Odyssey 🚀

K’s quest began at the tender age of 10, when he created his very first to-do list in a notebook. Since then, he has been in a constant struggle to conquer productivity, always feeling dissatisfied with existing solutions. “Is anyone else forever unhappy with to-do apps?” he asked, and a resounding chorus of agreement confirmed his shared pain. From the early days of Todoist and similar apps, K felt a deep need for something more.

Agents need more than a chat - Jacob Lauritzen, CTO Legora

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 08:15:06 -0700

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Jacob Lauritzen

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AI Engineer Europe 2026

Beyond the Chatbox: Why Complex AI Agents Need More Than Just Conversation 🚀

If you have ever tasked an AI agent with a long-running, complex project—like drafting a legal contract—you have likely hit the “context rot” wall. You watch the agent spin up sub-agents, search the web, and write files, only for it to stumble on a minor detail, hallucinate, or lose the plot entirely 30 minutes later.

How AI is changing Software Engineering: A Conversation with Gergely Orosz, @pragmaticengineer

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 09:00:06 -0700

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Gergely Orosz

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AI Engineer Europe 2026

Token Maximizing: The New (and Bizarre) Metric in Big Tech 🤯

Ever feel like you’re drowning in metrics? Well, buckle up, because the tech world has a new, and frankly, wild one: token maximizing. Gergely Orosz, the brilliant mind behind The Pragmatic Engineer, dropped some serious insights on this phenomenon, and it’s a story that’s both hilarious and a little bit terrifying.

Taste & Craft: A Conversation with Tuomas Artman, CTO Linear & Gergely Orosz, @pragmaticengineer

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 07:00:06 -0700

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AI Engineer Europe 2026

🚀 Beyond the Feature Factory: Why AI Makes “Taste” the Ultimate Competitive Advantage

In a world where AI can generate code in seconds, the biggest risk to software isn’t moving too slowly—it’s moving too fast in the wrong direction. 📉

In a recent conversation between Tuomas Artman (Co-founder of Linear) and Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer), the duo explored how the “shipping frenzy” triggered by AI agents might actually be degrading the quality of modern software. They dive deep into how Linear maintains its legendary quality bar and why the future of engineering belongs to those who think like product owners.

Gemma, DeepMind's Family of Open Models — Omar Sanseviero, Google DeepMind

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 08:15:06 -0700

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Omar Sanseviero

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AI Engineer Europe 2026

Gemma 4: The Open Model Revolution You Can Hold in Your Hand! 🚀📱

Hey tech enthusiasts! Ever dreamed of having cutting-edge AI power right in your pocket, running offline, totally customized for your needs? Well, that future just got a whole lot closer! Google DeepMind recently unveiled Gemma 4, their most capable family of open models yet, and it’s set to redefine what’s possible with on-device AI.

The New Application Layer - Malte Ubl, CTO Vercel

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 08:15:06 -0700

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Malte Ubl

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AI Engineer Europe 2026

The Rise of the AI Engineer: Building the Future of Software 🚀

We are currently witnessing one of the most significant shifts in the history of technology. As Malte Ubl, CTO of Vercel, recently shared at the AI Engineer Conference in Europe, we aren’t just witnessing a trend—we are participating in the legitimate successor to web development.

As software engineering faces unprecedented disruption, we are moving into an era where agents are both the builders and the users of our infrastructure. Here is how we navigate this new frontier.

Code Mode: Let the Code do the Talking - Sunil Pai, Cloudflare

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 10:19:35 -0700

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Sunil Pai

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AI Engineer Europe 2026

Beyond Tool Calls: Unleashing the Power of Code Generation with AI 🚀

Hey tech enthusiasts! Ever felt the frustration of AI struggling with complex tasks, especially when dealing with a multitude of services and tools? Sunil Pai, from Cloudflare and creator of PartyKit, dives deep into a revolutionary approach that’s changing the game: code generation. Forget the clunky JSON back-and-forth; Sunil introduces us to a world where AI writes code to get things done, unlocking unprecedented efficiency and flexibility.

The Future of MCP — David Soria Parra, Anthropic

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 08:00:06 -0700

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David Soria Parra

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AI Engineer Europe 2026

The Agent Ecosystem: From Demos to Production-Ready Connectivity 🚀

Hey tech enthusiasts! David Soria Parra here, and I’m buzzing with excitement about the incredible evolution of the agent ecosystem. We’ve come a long way from simple specs and local tools to a vibrant, production-ready landscape. Let’s dive into what’s happening and where we’re headed!

MCP Applications: Shipping Intelligence, Not Just Code 💡

Imagine an agent that ships its own interface, not as a plugin or a hardcoded feature, but as a fully functional application served over an MCP server. This is the power of MCP applications! You can take this server, deploy it anywhere – the cloud, ChatGPT, VS Code Cursor – and it just works. This requires a crucial element: semantics. Both the client and the server need to understand each other, how to render the UI, and that an interface is indeed coming. This is where a robust protocol becomes essential.

How Google DeepMind is researching the next Frontier of AI for Gemini — Raia Hadsell, VP of Research

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 16:20:35 -0700

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Raia Hadsell

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AI Engineer Europe 2026

Beyond the Chatbot: Exploring the Frontier of Intelligence with Raia Hadsell 🚀

At the recent AI Engineer conference in London, Raia Hadsell, VP of Research at Google DeepMind, took the stage to remind us that the future of AI is much broader than just text boxes and chat interfaces. With a background spanning from the philosophy of religion to a PhD in convolutional neural networks under Yann LeCun, Hadsell now leads a massive team of 1,200 scientists and engineers across 10 global labs.

The Friction is Your Judgment — Armin Ronacher & Cristina Poncela Cubeiro, Earendil

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 03:30:06 -0700

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AI Engineer Europe 2026

Embrace the Friction: Steering AI Agents in Software Development 🚀💡

“Ship without friction.” Sounds like a dream, doesn’t it? A smooth, unhindered path from idea to deployment. But what if that frictionless journey secretly leads to a cliff edge? That’s the intriguing question Armin Ronacher, a software development veteran with 20 years in the open-source space (and creator of the Python framework Flask!), and Cristina Poncela Cubeiro, a self-described “native AI engineer,” challenged us with. Their message is clear: in the age of AI agents, we need to add a little bit of friction back into our development process.

State of the Claw — Peter Steinberger

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 08:30:06 -0700

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Peter Steinberger

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AI Engineer Europe 2026

🚀 The State of the Claw: Navigating the Future of Agentic AI 🤖

In just five months, OpenClaw has achieved what many thought impossible: it has become the fastest-growing open-source project in GitHub’s history. With nearly 30,000 commits, 2,000 contributors, and a trajectory that defies traditional growth charts, OpenClaw is redefining how we interact with personal AI agents.

Peter Steinberger, the project’s creator and a recent addition to the OpenAI team, took the stage to discuss the “State of the Claw,” the challenges of hyper-growth, and why the future of AI belongs to the users.

Harness Engineering: How to Build Software When Humans Steer, Agents Execute — Ryan Lopopolo, OpenAI

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 17:29:28 -0700

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AI Engineer Europe 2026

Harness Engineering: Building Software with Humans Steering and Agents Executing 🚀

The world of software development is undergoing a seismic shift, and at the forefront of this revolution is Ryan Lopopolo, a Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI. For the past nine months, Ryan has been living and breathing a new paradigm: building software exclusively with agents. He’s a self-proclaimed “token billionaire,” not in the financial sense, but in his belief that everyone should have access to the power of AI models to accomplish complex tasks.

Building pi in a World of Slop — Mario Zechner

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 15:58:06 -0700

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Mario Zechner

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AI Engineer Europe 2026

🚀 Beyond the Slop: Why I Built Pi and Why We Need to Slow Down

Hey there, I’m Mario Zechner. Recently, I’ve been wearing a t-shirt covered in paid ad space to raise money for charity, but when I’m not being a human billboard, I’m thinking about the “tragedy” of modern AI development. We are currently living in a world of slop, and I’m here to tell you how I built Pi to escape it.