Claude Code Cast

Opus 5.5 Is Cheaper. Is Your Agent?

Anthropic says Claude Opus 5.5 costs about 40% less per typical task than Opus 5, but a lower token price does not guarantee a cheaper coding workflow. Fictional AI hosts

An Agent Missing One Key Burned $100. Claude Code Projects Needs This Stop Rule

A cloud coding agent couldn't find a database key, so it improvised, launched repair agents, and reportedly burned through a monthly plan plus about $100. Fictional AI ho

Claude Code's Cache Fixes: Check Before You Switch Models

An expensive coding session can start with a broken cache, not a harder task. Fictional AI hosts Alex and Sam unpack Claude Code's September cache fixes, explain what the

OpenAI Cut Off Cursor. Five Days Later, Four Models Went Down.

On August 29 OpenAI ended its Cursor partnership. On September 3 ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and Gemini were reported down almost simultaneously, and nobody has explained why.

Same Model, 70x the Tokens—Your Harness Sets the Bill

Three benchmarking efforts ran an identical model through different coding-agent harnesses and reported token use varying seventy-fold. Fictional AI hosts Alex and Sam ex

Your Coding Agent Passed the Benchmark—Then Failed the Refactor

Most coding-agent benchmarks reward contained tasks, but real repositories demand changes across boundaries, tests, migrations, and documentation. Fictional AI hosts Alex

Passing Tests Isn't Enough for Your Next Coding Agent

Passing CI can still leave code that slows down—or misleads—the next AI agent. Fictional AI hosts Alex and Sam use this week’s debate about Go and agent-friendly engineer

Your OpenClaw Updates Need a Canary, Not Courage

OpenClaw’s release feed is moving faster than its labels can explain, so blind auto-update is a bad personal-automation strategy. Cleo and Dev build a Release Sentinel ca

Claude Code Changed Engines—Your Evals Just Broke

Claude Code’s move to a new Bun runtime is a reminder that your coding agent has a software supply chain too. Alex and Sam unpack runtime drift, model routers, reverse-en

Better Agent Tools Made Code Review Worse

GitHub gave its code-review agent better tools and watched cost rise while useful findings fell. Alex and Sam unpack why task-shaped instructions beat bigger toolboxes, h

Your AI Coding Benchmarks Are Lying To You

This week, Alex and Sam look at why benchmark wins are a bad way to choose coding tools, what Godot's coding-agent ban reveals about mentorship, and a simple workflow for

The Tiny Local Model That Changes Your Agent Budget

Small, local models are suddenly good enough for real agent chores, but the win is not replacing your smartest model. Cleo and Dev unpack lightweight extraction models, m

Your Coding Agent Needs a Bouncer Now

AI coding agents are getting longer runs, more context, and more ways to touch production workflows, but this week made the real bottleneck obvious: authorization. Alex a

Verification Is Now Your Coding Agent Bottleneck

Coding agents are getting better at long runs, but this week's news points at the real limit: proof. Alex and Sam unpack agent loops, Stack Overflow for Agents, Copilot C

Cursor's Tokenomics Reckoning Hits Every Coding Agent

Coding agents are no longer just a workflow story; they are a cost, context, and control story. Alex and Sam unpack Cursor's pricing reset, Uber capping Claude Code usage

The Agent Benchmark That Should Scare Managers

Agentic coding tools are moving into enterprise workflows, but the week's most useful signal is a benchmark where frontier models still struggle below 50% on real IT task

The Workflow Feature That Makes Agents Less Expensive

Claude Code workflows, enterprise Codex deployments, and rising token costs all point to the same lesson: coding agents need operating systems, not just better prompts. A

Codex on Windows Changes the Agent Sandbox

OpenAI's Windows sandbox work is the practical story behind safer coding agents this week. Alex and Sam dig into Codex on Windows, remote cloud coding agents, Claude Code

A Cursor Agent Wiped a Prod DB in 10 Seconds. Let's Talk About That.

A Cursor AI agent deleted PocketOS's entire production database on April 25th — in under 10 seconds. This week Alex and Sam dig into the AI agent credential crisis, Anthr

Claude Security Just Went Public — Is Your Codebase Already Exposed?

Anthropic's Claude Security tool just dropped out of closed preview and it will scan your entire codebase for vulnerabilities — and the results might be uncomfortable. Th