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 uh

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 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. And

while Claude is working, I'll go to

another chat. I'm very into keyboard

shortcuts. So, like 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 for 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 codebase 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 GB 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 use most of

the most of the things out of the box.

One core thing is that we always run

Claude and dangerously accept all

permissions. Like that is not the

default and that is uh default way to

run Cloud and Conductor. I think

something that's really important to us

is having like clear boundaries between

uh well, we call them slot-free zones.

Um and having like parts of the codebase

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. 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 codebase that are

like do not touch if you are an AI. Like

this is for human eyes only.

>> What's the Conductor tech stack?

>> It's a Tauri app. So, it's using the

native uh Safari web renderer, and the

backend 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

codebase 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 when you click it. I think

something we would do a bit differently

is building the core of the app 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 not going to affect

the core infrastructure. And I think

right now the the boundaries are a

little murky and like 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,

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 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

is 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 uh 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, 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 make make the game feel more like

your own and um I think that's going

[music] to happen with software as well.