From Python Core to Personal Apps: Working with AI Agents

Mariatta Wijaya is a multi-award-winning open source maintainer and contributor with over 20 years of software engineering experience. A Python core developer focused on workflow and documentation, she advises and administers Global PyLadies, co-founded PyCascades, and formerly chaired PyCon US, PyCascades, and PyLadiesCon.

Dan and Mariatta discuss why unreviewed AI-generated contributions burden CPython maintainers, even as Mariatta uses AI to write code. She shares how she reviews plans and results, records decisions, and builds Claude skills to prevent agents from repeating mistakes.

They also discuss her self-hosted personal apps, the limits she places on AI advice, and how she uses AI to help promote community events while keeping time for speaker mentorship. Mariatta explains why agent instructions should be useful to humans and why she packages recurring work as reusable scripts.

Full episode notes

Transcript

Chapters

• (00:00) - Introduction

• (01:35) - AI contributions and CPython maintainers

• (05:45) - Experience, review, and learning to code

• (09:16) - Migrating off Heroku with AI

• (12:17) - Documenting decisions and iterating on plans

• (19:26) - Claude skills and repeated Django mistakes

• (23:19) - Reviewing software as product owner and tester

• (28:01) - Where Mariatta prefers human judgment

• (34:24) - Personal apps and alternatives to subscriptions

• (43:43) - AI for community organizing

• (50:44) - Respecting project guidelines and reviewing output

• (53:27) - Documentation for humans and agents

• (55:36) - Git skills and reusable automation scripts

• (59:46) - Speaker management and spreadsheet parsing

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Links from the show

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• CPython

• Claude skills

• Django

• Heroku

• Claude

• Calendly

• Doodle

• Sessionize

• architectural decision record

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Guests

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Mariatta Wijaya, Python Core Developer

• Website

• Mastodon

• Bluesky

• LinkedIn

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Follow the podcast

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• LinkedIn

• Threads

• Instagram

• TikTok

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Follow Dan Gerlanc

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• X

• LinkedIn

• Threads

• Bluesky