Conductor CEO Charlie Holtz Walks Us Through His AI Coding Setup

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.

So, a recent thing that I can't live without is this uh gooseneck microphone,

$20 on Amazon.

We are all trying to talk to our computers more.

Um, 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 merge PR 3475."

And it's a a little bit less disruptive.

I think we we all got these in an attempt to encourage more talking

to computers.

I spend 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 N.

Uh, that was actually a sneak a sneak peek of something we are working

on,

which is Claude Workspaces.

But I'll I'll do 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 uh 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.

Claude is working, I'll go to another chat.

I'm very into keyboard shortcuts.

So, I try to 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 to me,

but quite often Claude won't get things exactly right.

And I'll give things uh a comment like a GitHub-style comment, 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 setting.

Okay, so something I'm very excited about is on the go.

Uh I'm going to just speak into my phone and it's say,

"Let's add a new feature where I can change the theme to hacker mode."

And then I'm going to click conduct.

And then my computer starts working on it

and I can uh conduct on the go.

>> Do you still write code today?

>> 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

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 merge 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 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.

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 put them in the right direction

if they like need some correction

or just merging in

if it looks good.

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

>> I use Telegram a decent amount to talk to my open claw.

That's that's been a recent addition for me.

I use spokenly for text to speech.

That's what comes out when I press control space.

It's actually running a local model.

It's running parakeet.

I have a really beefed up computer.

So it's like 128 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 got it basically to like force myself to like use the lowest

spec option.

>> Are there any tweaks

that you do still stand by

that are the customizations

that actually do matter?

>> A couple of things like we put a lot of time into our

skills files and our like Claude MD.

If I like open it up like you can see you can see like

this is 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.

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 token max like you have to be in fast mode.

I do use a context 7 MCP.

I think that's pretty helpful to get documentation.

But other than that like you use most of the most of the things

out of the box.

One core thing is that we always run Claude in dangerously accept all permissions.

Like that is not the default

and that is the default way to run a cloud

and conductor.

I think something that's really important to us is having like clear boundaries between

what we call them slot free zones,

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 slot

free zones,

but like it has to be like every line has to be read by

a human.

I think this actually like served us pretty well,

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 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.

>> What's the connector text stack?

>> It's a Tauri app.

So, it's using the native Safari web renderer,

and the back end is technically Rust, but we write almost everything in TypeScript.

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.

Another thing we talk about is like don't let the AI be your architect.

Even 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 going to 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 just doesn't feel like crafted.

It's like really important to us that 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 in 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 going to 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 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 going to 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 they'd expect.

When we first launched conductor,

uh most of the feedback we got was like this is crazy.

Like I barely can manage like one cloud code or like one code X.

Like how am I going to 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 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 enforce 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 cloud right now is right now like you shut

your laptop and the agents are going to stop running.

But like feels like we're very quickly moving to a world where the agents

are going to run for 10 times longer

and they're going to be 10 times smarter

and they're going to need to run in an environment

that like isn't constrained by like your Mac's like CPU.

>> It seems like you're building conductor in a very opinionated way.

How do you build the conviction behind your decisions?

>> Okay, that's a great that's a great question cuz 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 don't we're not big on analytics

or like looking at like our AB 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 like I don't need a separate composer

and I can type messages here

and it all feels unified.

>> You sound like you default to cloud code in a lot of places,

but conductor supports Codex too.

When do you reach for Codex?

>> Oh yeah, 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.

Cloud 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 of a partner.

And so 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 want to get stuff done." like I'll go to Codex.

>> Why isn't just a terminal good enough?

>> 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 want to 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 out of 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 with a uh user interface.

>> Let's talk about token maxing.

>> Yeah.

>> What's your high water mark on lines of code in a day

or spend in a month?

>> 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 like previous generation of models.

Um and the lines of code was must have been like tens of thousands

that month.

I'm very big on spending like on token maxing, 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 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 in established code base

like Conductor.

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

>> 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.

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

>> 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 Gary 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 G stack

and it's like it's there's some like interesting ideas there,

I think.

Like especially around like onboarding.

Then we've added uh actually a specific mode for him called Gary 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 Gary's face here

if you're in Gary's mode.

>> What feels obvious to you

and your team that the rest of the world doesn't fully understand yet?

>> 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 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 want to go to like the the trumpet player

and be like,

"Okay, you're out of tune."

And then you want to 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 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 metaphor that I always think of

when I think of malleable software is 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,

building 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 make make the game feel more like your own

and um I think that's going to happen with software

as well.