Conductor CEO Charlie Holtz Walks Us Through His AI Coding Setup

1. 0:00 – 0:23

   Intro

   1. CHCharlie Holtz0:00

      Hello, I am Charlie, the co-founder of Conductor, which is an app that lets you orchestrate a bunch of coding agents on your Mac, and we were YC Summer '24, uh, and I'd love to show you my setup. [ on-hold music] So

2. 0:23 – 0:51

   Talking to computers more!

   1. CHCharlie Holtz0:23

      a recent thing that I can't live without is this, uh, gooseneck microphone, twenty dollars on Amazon. We are all trying to talk to our computers more. Um, uh, one issue with having, like, an open floor plan office is that can be pretty distracting, so one advantage of these is you can, like, lean over and whisper into Claude and be like, "Please, uh, merge PR3475," and it's a, a little bit less disruptive. I th- we, we all got these i-in an attempt to encourage more talking to computers. I spend

3. 0:51 – 2:20

   Using Conductor to build Conductor

   1. CHCharlie Holtz0:51

      most of my day in Conductor. We're using Conductor to build Conductor. One thing that I do is I'm constantly kicking off new tasks, so I'm constantly, um, going Command, and, uh, that was actually a sneak, a sneak peek of something we are working on, which is cloud workspaces. But I'll, I'll, I'll do a Command N, and then I'll speak into my computer and say, um, "Can you take a look at the latest linear issue and give me a, a rough pass at how you'd solve it?" Stuff like that, and then press Enter, and then I can see that it's running in the sidebar, and while Claude is working, I'll go to another chat. I'm very into keyboard shortcuts, so I try and make everything have a keyboard shortcut. So in this case I'll do Command Shift Y. I can see here that this workspace is ready to merge, so I'll take a look at it, give Claude a quick review. Um, in this case it's a pretty small PR, and so it looks good f- to me, but quite often Claude won't get things exactly right, and I'll give things a, a comment, like a GitHub style comment and say, uh, "This looks a little bit weird to me. Why do we need this?" Press Enter, get Claude running, and then go back to a different workspace. A big part of, um, how I use Conductor is, like, experimentation. Like, I'm always kicking off workspaces to try different ideas. Most of them don't make it in, so, like, you can see we have, like, four PRs here that are in review, but, like, there's a bunch of random ideas that I've tried here that are in progress that, you know, may never see the light of day. If I like it, then it might get promoted to, like, an internal setting and then an experimental

4. 2:20 – 2:40

   Conductor “on the go”

   1. CHCharlie Holtz2:20

      setting. Okay, so something I'm very excited about is on the go. Uh, I'm gonna just speak into my phone and say, "Let's add a new feature where I can change the theme to hacker mode." And then I'm gonna click Conduct, and then my computer starts working on it and I can, uh, conduct on the go.

5. 2:40 – 4:04

   Does Charlie still write code by hand?

   1. GTGarry Tan2:40

      Do you still write code today?

   2. CHCharlie Holtz2:41

      No. Yeah, no. Very occasionally I will, like, edit Tailwind classes or, like, open up an IDE to change, like, a .env file. We actually added a mode that we call Caveman Mode, which is, uh, you click this and you can actually type with your keyboard and, like, make changes in a file. Once in a while you do need to, like, make a change to a, a file by hand, but it's like, it's called Caveman Mode for a reason. Most of the time if I want small edits, I'll, like, highlight and then, uh, tell the AI, um, about my comments, or I'll just, like, speak into my computer and say, "That button looks a little too wide. Like, can you, uh, can you make it smaller?" By the way, this thing is now ready to merge, um, so I just wanted to show you. I can now click Archive, and it's gone from my side panel and, like, merged into the code base. And, uh, this one I can see that there are checks running, and once it's finished I can just, like, click Merge and, and, uh, get it in. We recently added this thing called Status in the left, so when something, like, is kicked off, it's in progress, and then once there's a PR created, it's in review, and then once it's merged it goes into the Done folder. We have this new concept of a dashboard page where, uh, from, like, one place you can see what all your agents are working on and then, like, take them to the next action. But we're still messing around with, like, what the, what the interface should look and feel like.

6. 4:04 – 4:18

   Feeling like the CEO of a little company

   1. CHCharlie Holtz4:04

      But the ideal is, like, you should feel like the CEO of a little company, and you can see all your agents working for you, and they'll bring you up, like, digestible reports, and then you can point them in the right direction if they, like, need some correction or just merge it in if it looks good.

   2. GTGarry Tan4:17

      What

7. 4:18 – 5:48

   Other apps & software, customization

   1. GTGarry Tan4:18

      are your other main applications, main software that you use?

   2. CHCharlie Holtz4:22

      I use Telegram a decent amount to talk to my OpenClau. That's, that's been a recent addition for me. I use Spokenly for text-to-speech. That's what comes up when I press, uh, Control Space. It's actually running a local model. It's running Parakeet. Um, I have a really beefed up computer, so it's, like, a hundred and twenty-eight gigabytes of RAM, partly so I can, like, run local models like Parakeet. But as a side note, I have just recently ordered the MacBook Neo, like the, the bottom of the line, lowest RAM, lowest memory. I, I, I got it basically to, like, force myself to, like, use the lowest spec option.

   3. GTGarry Tan4:54

      Are there any tweaks that you do still stand by that are the customizations that actually do matter?

   4. CHCharlie Holtz4:58

      Uh, a couple things. Like, we s- put a lot of time into our skills files and our, like, Claude MD. If I, like, open it up, like, you can s- you can see, like, this is, uh, probably a few hundred lines. There's, like, some interesting things in here, like it's... We say, "Engineering practices. We're a startup. You're probably used to writing enterprise code, but that's not how we do things around here." And we have, like, a lot of things like that that we've, like, put into our Claude MD and our skills files over time. What else do I do? I always use fast mode. That's not a default. If you're trying to tokenmax, like, you have to be in fast mode. I do use a Context seven MCP. I think that's pretty helpful to get documentation. But other than that, I, like, use most of the, most of the things o-out of the box. One core thing is that we always run Claude and dangerously accept all permissions. Um, like, that is not the default, and that is, uh, the default way to run, uh, Claude

8. 5:48 – 6:33

   “Slop-free” zones

   1. CHCharlie Holtz5:48

      in Conductor. I think something that's really important to us is having, like, clear boundaries between, uh, well, we call them slop-free zones, um, and having, like, parts of the code base or, like, parts of the documentation that we, like, know is written by a human. It's possible, like, that the AI, the AI can contribute to the, the slop-free zones, but, like, it has to be, like, every line has to be read by a human. I think there's actually, like... Served us pretty well, um, because if, if you're not careful, like, the AI can, like, get in a, a vicious, a vicious cycle where, like, it sees bad code and then it writes more bad code as a result, and the same thing can happen in, like, the positive, uh, positive direction. We have, like, some lines in our code base that are like, "Do not touch if you are an AI." Like, this is for human eyes only.

9. 6:33 – 7:06

   Conductor tech stack

   1. CHCharlie Holtz6:33

      Yeah.

   2. GTGarry Tan6:33

      What's the Conductor tech stack?

   3. CHCharlie Holtz6:34

      It's a Tauri app, so it's using the native, uh, Safari web renderer, and the back end is technically Rust, but we write almost everything in TypeScript. Um, so it's, like, probably 90, 95% TypeScript on the, like the desktop app. The web app is Elixir. It's a, it's a Phoenix app. It's a very small app because literally all you can do in it right now is just, like, log in. But I am, I'm a huge Elixir fan, and I am always, like, pushing for more Elixir in our code base when we can. But, um, most of what we're doing is in TypeScript.

10. 7:06 – 8:31

    Don’t let the AI be your architect

    1. CHCharlie Holtz7:06

       Another thing we talk about is, like, don't let the AI be your architect. Even the, the concept of, like, a workspace here in the sidebar, which in some ways is just like an abstraction around a work tree, at least for right now. Like, that's actually gonna change soon. But even that, like, concept of a workspace, like, we as a human had to, like, think that through. The other thing is, like, like, design and, like, interface decisions. This concept of having, like, all your chats here on the left and then the chat in the middle and then the right sidebar where you can, like, review code changes or run your app. Like, we put a lot of thought into, into those decisions, and I think if you let the AI make your, like, UI choices for you, you can end up with something that, like, it, it just doesn't feel like crafted. It's, like, really important to us that it, it feels crafted. Like, even this decision, so, like, we, we thought for a long time about how this open in button should work, which is kind of funny because now there's, like, so many apps have, like, have the same pattern. The thing that we were really thinking about is whether we should show the icons at the top. I was pretty against showing icons here at first because it just feels like, okay, in the top bar of our app, like, we're, like, advertising a different app. But now I, I really like it, and it's, like, a clear visual of, like, what's gonna happen, um, when you click it. I think something we would do a bit differently is building the core of the app, um, around, like, human-written APIs and, like, contracts that the AI wouldn't contribute to as much. And then

11. 8:31 – 8:59

    Where you can give the AI more free reign

    1. CHCharlie Holtz8:31

       I think that, like, it's important to have a big chunks of your code base be like, have, like, free reign for the AI, where you can just, like, throw a ton of different ideas at it and know that it's, like, not gonna affect the core infrastructure. And I think right now the, the boundaries are a little murky and, like, um, that's the thing we're, we're working on improving. I think it's really important to us that we stay, like, a little ahead of the frontier. Like, push, push people's comfort zones a little bit more than, um, they'd expect.

12. 8:59 – 10:40

    Enforcing workflows and building conviction

    1. CHCharlie Holtz8:59

       When we first launched Conductor, uh, most of the feedback we got was like, "This is crazy. Like, I barely can manage, like, one Claude code or, like, one Codex. Like, how am I gonna manage, like, three or, like, even five?" We also purposely made it so, like, you can't edit files directly. Like, we, like, made it so that, like, every, anytime a workspace, like, has to be a work tree, and it has to then create a PR, and then you have to merge it. So we really, like, enforced our workflow. I think, like, what's, what's exciting but also hard about where we're at is, like, we have to constantly adapt to where, like, the models are going. So that's one reason, like, we are putting so much work into, like, Claude right now is right now, like, you shut your laptop and the agents are gonna stop running. But, like, feels like we're very quickly moving to a world where the agents are gonna run for ten times longer, and they're gonna be ten times smarter, and they're gonna need to run in an environment that, like, isn't constrained by, like, your Mac's, like, CPU.

    2. GTGarry Tan9:52

       It seems like you're building Conductor in a very opinionated way. How do you build the conviction behind your decisions?

    3. CHCharlie Holtz9:57

       That, that's a great, that's a great question 'cause, yeah, like, it-- especially for, like, our audience, they want a lot of, like, configuration. And I do think it is important for the tool to, like, be flexible and to, like, feel like yours. But the way we build conviction is we force ourselves to use it, because-- Actually, we don't even force it. Like, we, we just use it every day. And so if it doesn't feel right, like, we, like, quickly can, can decide. But we, we- we're not big on analytics or, like, looking at, like, our A/B testing or, like... It's very much a, like, gut feel. This feels right. Like, when I click this, it feels right that it opens in the center and that way I, like I don't need a separate composer and I can type messages here and it all feels unified.

13. 10:40 – 11:17

    Codex vs Claude Code

    1. GTGarry Tan10:40

       You sound like you default to Claude Code in a lot of places, but Conductor supports Codex too.

    2. CHCharlie Holtz10:43

       Yeah.

    3. GTGarry Tan10:44

       When do you reach for Codex?

    4. CHCharlie Holtz10:45

       Okay, I've recently actually been using Codex more. Codex is like the workhorse. It will power through, like, a specific problem or, like, uh, it's not afraid to do a ton of tool calls and, like, debug something with me for a long time. Claude I'll reach for when I want a little more, like, back and forth. I feel like Opus is just, like, a little more creative, like, a little more, uh, of a partner. And so I, I would say, like, when I'm building out a new, a new feature, like, I, I probably would, like, instinctively reach for Opus. And then when I'm like, "Okay, now we just wanna get stuff done," like, I'll, I'll go to Codex.

14. 11:17 – 12:01

    Why is a terminal not enough?

    1. GTGarry Tan11:17

       Why isn't just a terminal good enough?

    2. CHCharlie Holtz11:20

       There's a reason, uh, we moved from terminal interfaces to, like, GUI interfaces in the '80s. Like, I think humans are spatial visual creatures and, like, having a, a command line interface just, like, feels like it's-- feels very, like, restrictive. And I think it maybe works for the AI brains better than the human brains. But I think just, like, I wanna know that, okay, my chats are over here and my, like, review panel's here. I can talk to the AI in the middle. I just think, like, yeah. Bottom line, like, humans are, like, visual, visual creatures. I also think, like, like, at a, like a, like zooming in a little bit, like, there's a lot that you can't do in a terminal, um, like, that you can do w- with a, a user interface.

15. 12:01 – 12:53

    Thoughts on tokenmaxxing?

    1. GTGarry Tan12:01

       Let's talk about tokenmaxxing.

    2. CHCharlie Holtz12:03

       Yeah.

    3. GTGarry Tan12:03

       What's your high water mark on lines of code in a day or spend in a month?

    4. CHCharlie Holtz12:08

       I think the highest spend was when we were starting out. Conductor, like in July 2025, I spent $22,000 on tokens that month. Granted, that was with, uh, like previous generation of models. Um, and the lines of code was, uh, must have been like tens of thousands that month. I'm very big on spending, like, on tokenmaxxing, like using fast mode, like think extra hard all, like high effort all the time. But we're not big on lines of code. We, uh, we try and keep the lines of code minimal, actually. There's a bunch of reasons for this, but I think, like, you can quickly spiral ... Your code base can spiral out of control if you're, like, not careful about the lines of code added. But I, I, I think about it very differently if I'm, like, starting up an app versus, like, working an established code base like Conductor.

16. 12:53 – 13:25

    How have workflows changed compared to 6 months ago?

    1. GTGarry Tan12:53

       What's different about your workflows today from, say, 6 months ago?

    2. CHCharlie Holtz12:58

       On a lot of, like, hard PRs, I would open an IDE and make changes by hand, and I also use GitHub, like the web app, a lot, a lot less now because I can just, like, review the code changes here in Conductor and, like, add comments here if I need to. We do have, like, a lot of PR checks that run. Um, and, uh, so that's why we recently added this, like, uh, this checks tab, which lets us just, like, add comments from GitHub, like, into Conductor.

17. 13:25 – 14:17

    Most surprising thing someone has done with Conductor?

    1. GTGarry Tan13:25

       What's the most surprising thing you've seen someone else do with Conductor?

    2. CHCharlie Holtz13:28

       One was, like, someone built, like, a mobile version of Conductor by, like, hacking together a bunch of our ... I don't actually even really know how it works, but I know it's, like, spoofing, like, IPC calls to our desktop app, which is pretty interesting. I think honestly, Garry has shown us a lot of what you can do with Conductor. He is really putting it to the test. I think I've learned from him a bit about, like, how hard you can go on skills. Like, skills are very much like a first class thing in, in GStack, and it's like, it's ... There's some, like, interesting ideas there, I think, like especially around, like, onboarding. And we've added, uh, actually a specific mode for him called Garry mode, which by default does not collapse any of the tool calls. So you can see all the tool calls are default on collapse, and, uh, you can even actually see, uh, Garry's face here if you're in Garry's mode.

18. 14:17 – 15:00

    Something obvious to you that the world doesn’t see yet?

    1. GTGarry Tan14:17

       What feels obvious to you and your team that the rest of the world doesn't fully understand yet?

    2. CHCharlie Holtz14:22

       Like, I think there's, like, a lot of cool stuff to explore with, like, collaboration between humans and the AIs. Should you be able to communicate with sub-agents? Should you be able to have, like, multiplayer chats where, like, multiple people are working on the same thing with the AIs? And then of course, like, the ... A metaphor we'll o- we'll often talk about is, like, feeling like the conductor of an orchestra. You, like, uh, wave the baton, and, like, the instruments are playing in unison. And then once in a while you wanna go to, like, the, the trumpet player and be like, "Okay, you're out of tune." And then you wanna, like, zoom out to, like, the string section and, like, uh, you should play a bit faster. But then most of the time you're, like, conducting at the, the orchestra level. Code is almost

19. 15:00 – 15:48

    Code is becoming sawdust

    1. CHCharlie Holtz15:00

       like, uh, sawdust now in that, like, it used to be that code was the thing you were building. It was, like, the structure. You were putting time into, like, in, in, into, like, crafting the code, and now you're putting time into describing what you want and how you want it to be built, and the code is almost just, like, sawdust that comes out of that process. And, like, that leads to, like, a lot of, like, interesting conclusions. Like, one of them is, like, really what matters is your prompts, and, like, when the next generation of models come out, you can just, like, rerun your prompts again, and then you'll get new code, and the old code didn't really matter. I think that's one thing that, like, the world is slowly waking up to. I think, like, the submit a prompt, like the prompt request feature is sort of like an early experiment with malleable software. I ... The, the metaphor that I always think of when I think of malleable software is,

20. 15:48 – 16:34

    Call Of Duty modding to software

    1. CHCharlie Holtz15:48

       like, video games and how, like, when you play, like, Call Of Duty, like the structure of the game is the same for everyone and, like, the skeleton is the same, but each person can, like, I don't know, like use custom skins or, like, faster, like, reload speeds or whatever. And, like, same way you can, like, mod a video game, I want you to be able to mod Conductor and, like, yeah, build in your own workflows a little bit. It's important that, like, the structure feels the same and, like, people want software that's, like, been crafted and been, like, really thought through. But I also, you know, like video game mods, uh, make, make the game feel more like y- your own and, um, I think that's gonna happen with software as well. [upbeat music]

Episode duration: 16:34