RenderATL 2026

RenderATL 2026 is a wrap. I presented at Render(ATL) for the first time last week. It was a fun conference; very developer-centric (my people!)

The talk

My session was "Sandwiches, Coding Agents, and Getting Results When You Aren't Paying Attention." The tl;dr is that agentic development is like turning an army of eager, expert amnesiac interns loose. Agents are well-trained and desperate to please, but they need coaching and you need protection to produce good code.

The talk walks through a handful of ways to direct your agents and make your instructions actually stick:

Enforcing architecture with ArchUnit — and its Python and JavaScript ports
Continually refining Skills without bloating your context
Cross-model code reviews
Docker Sandboxes and YOLO mode

I've been using these techniques for a while, am constantly refining them, and am getting good results. The talk was recorded so you may be able to stream it. You are also welcome to contact me directly if the topic is of interest.

The crowd

There was great interaction from the crowd, and I will hopefully be back next year.

The Picture

This picture is from Garibaldi Park in Vancouver, Canada. I took it from the window of a small plane while on a Red Hat trip one year. The flight was a real treat!