Conductor CEO Charlie Holtz Walks Us Through His AI Coding Setup

In the first episode of our new series Full Stack, Conductor CEO and co-founder Charlie Holtz takes us into the details of how he sets up his workflow for coding and managing AI agents. https://www.conductor.build/ Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs Chapters: 00:00 - Intro 00:23 - Talking to computers more! 00:51 - Using Conductor to build Conductor 02:20 - Conductor “on the go” 02:40 - Does Charlie still write code by hand? 04:04 - Feeling like the CEO of a little company 04:18 - Other apps & software, customization 05:48 - “Slop-free” zones 06:33 - Conductor tech stack 07:06 - Don’t let the AI be your architect 08:31 - Where you can give the AI more free reign 08:59 - Enforcing workflows and building conviction 10:40 - Codex vs Claude Code 11:17 - Why is a terminal not enough? 12:01 - Thoughts on tokenmaxxing? 12:53 - How have workflows changed compared to 6 months ago? 13:25 - Most surprising thing someone has done with Conductor? 14:17 - Something obvious to you that the world doesn’t see yet? 15:00 - Code is becoming sawdust 15:48 - Call Of Duty modding to software

Charlie HoltzguestGarry Tanhost

Jun 4, 202616mWatch on YouTube ↗

EPISODE INFO

Released: June 4, 2026
Duration: 16m
Channel: Y Combinator
Watch on YouTube: ▶ Open ↗

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

In the first episode of our new series Full Stack, Conductor CEO and co-founder Charlie Holtz takes us into the details of how he sets up his workflow for coding and managing AI agents. https://www.conductor.build/ Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs Chapters: 00:00 - Intro 00:23 - Talking to computers more! 00:51 - Using Conductor to build Conductor 02:20 - Conductor “on the go” 02:40 - Does Charlie still write code by hand? 04:04 - Feeling like the CEO of a little company 04:18 - Other apps & software, customization 05:48 - “Slop-free” zones 06:33 - Conductor tech stack 07:06 - Don’t let the AI be your architect 08:31 - Where you can give the AI more free reign 08:59 - Enforcing workflows and building conviction 10:40 - Codex vs Claude Code 11:17 - Why is a terminal not enough? 12:01 - Thoughts on tokenmaxxing? 12:53 - How have workflows changed compared to 6 months ago? 13:25 - Most surprising thing someone has done with Conductor? 14:17 - Something obvious to you that the world doesn’t see yet? 15:00 - Code is becoming sawdust 15:48 - Call Of Duty modding to software

SPEAKERS

Charlie Holtz
guest
Co-founder and CEO of Conductor (YC Summer 2024), an AI agent orchestration app for coding workflows.
Garry Tan
host
President and CEO of Y Combinator and a frequent on-camera interviewer for YC content.

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Y Combinator, featuring Charlie Holtz and Garry Tan, Conductor CEO Charlie Holtz Walks Us Through His AI Coding Setup explores conductor CEO demos agentic AI workflow, guardrails, and beliefs Holtz demonstrates a multi-workspace, keyboard-driven workflow where he continuously spawns AI tasks, reviews diffs, leaves PR-style comments, and merges from inside Conductor.

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