Posit PBC

When Phillip Cloud talks to a coding agent, he doesn't want small talk. He doesn't want "great job!" and he definitely doesn't want to go surfing on a metaphorical lake. He wants the robot to do the thing and deliver.
In this clip from The Test Set, Phillip — principal engineer at NVIDIA and lead of the Ibis project — explains why he actually prefers Cursor Agent's stripped-down, emotionless default mode over Claude Code's chattier vibe (when you're deep in a coding session, you don't need a cheerleader). You need a machine that doesn't flinch. The full conversation digs into Phillip's AI skepticism arc and what it would actually take to impress him.

Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sleeping-rats-and-sociopathic-agents-with-phillip-cloud/id1823736938?i=1000753993750 and Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/26TrCZXpJaTUQahbtCUURm?si=vLB0SiLtT1eT4x4KDFO5Bg

Get to know Marco Gorelli, Celtic folk shredder, Narwhals mastermind, and software engineer at QuanSight Labs. In this episode of the Test Set, Marco joins Michael and Wes to unpack the Narwhals origin story, plus trust in open source, and finding leverage in boring problems.

Listen on Spotify, or Apple Podcasts. Watch on YouTube or at thetestset.co.

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