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AI Engineering Podcast

AI Engineering Podcast

By: Tobias Macey
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 This show is your guidebook to building scalable and maintainable AI systems. You will learn how to architect AI applications, apply AI to your work, and the considerations involved in building or customizing new models. Everything that you need to know to deliver real impact and value with machine learning and artificial intelligence.© 2024 Boundless Notions, LLC.
Episodes
  • AI Agents and Identity Management

    AI Agents and Identity Management
    Sep 13 2025
    SummaryIn this episode of the AI Engineering Podcast Julianna Lamb, co-founder and CTO of Stytch, talks about the complexities of managing identity and authentication in agentic workflows. She explores the evolving landscape of identity management in the context of machine learning and AI, highlighting the importance of flexible compute environments and seamless data exchange. The conversation covers implications of AI agents on identity management, including granular permissions, OAuth protocol, and adapting systems for agentic interactions. Julianna also discusses rate limiting, persistent identity, and evolving standards for managing identity in AI systems. She emphasizes the need to experiment with AI agents and prepare systems for integration to stay ahead in the rapidly advancing AI landscape.AnnouncementsHello and welcome to the AI Engineering Podcast, your guide to the fast-moving world of building scalable and maintainable AI systemsWhen ML teams try to run complex workflows through traditional orchestration tools, they hit walls. Cash App discovered this with their fraud detection models - they needed flexible compute, isolated environments, and seamless data exchange between workflows, but their existing tools couldn't deliver. That's why Cash App rely on Prefect. Now their ML workflows run on whatever infrastructure each model needs across Google Cloud, AWS, and Databricks. Custom packages stay isolated. Model outputs flow seamlessly between workflows. Companies like Whoop and 1Password also trust Prefect for their critical workflows. But Prefect didn't stop there. They just launched FastMCP - production-ready infrastructure for AI tools. You get Prefect's orchestration plus instant OAuth, serverless scaling, and blazing-fast Python execution. Deploy your AI tools once, connect to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client. No more building auth flows or managing servers. Prefect orchestrates your ML pipeline. FastMCP handles your AI tool infrastructure. See what Prefect and Fast MCP can do for your AI workflows at aiengineeringpodcast.com/prefect today.Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Julianna Lamb about the complexities of managing identity and auth in agentic workflowsInterviewIntroductionHow did you get involved in machine learning?The term "identity" is very overloaded. Can you start by giving your definition in the context of technical systems?What are some of the different ways that AI agents intersect with identity?We have decades of experience and effort in building identity infrastructure for the internet, what are the most significant ways in which that is insufficient for agent-based use cases?I have heard anecdotal references to the ways in which AI agents lead to a proliferation of "identities". How would you characterize the magnitude of the difference in scale between human-powered identity, deterministic automation (e.g. bots or bot-nets), and AI agents?The other major element of establishing and verifying "identity" is how that intersects with permissions or authorization. What are the major shortcomings of our existing investment in managing and auditing access and control once you are within a system?How does that get amplified with AI agents?Typically authentication has been done at the perimeter of a system. How does that architecture change when accounting for AI agents?How does that get complicated by where the agent originates? (e.g external agents interacting with a third-party system vs. internal agents operated by the service provider)What are the concrete steps that engineering teams should be taking today to start preparing their systems for agentic use-cases (internal or external)?How do agentic capabilities change the means of protecting against malicious bots? (e.g. bot detection, defensive agents, etc.)What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen authn/authz/identity addressed for AI use cases?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on identity/auth(n|z) systems?What are your predictions for the future of identity as adoption and sophistication of AI systems progresses?Contact InfoLinkedInParting QuestionFrom your perspective, what are the biggest gaps in tooling, technology, or training for AI systems today?Closing AnnouncementsThank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. The Data Engineering Podcast covers the latest on modern data management. Podcast.__init__ covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used.Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email hosts@aiengineeringpodcast.com with your story.To help other people find the show please leave a review on iTunes and tell your friends and co-workers.LinksStytchAI AgentMachine To Machine ...
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    54 mins
  • Revolutionizing Production Systems: The Resolve AI Approach

    Revolutionizing Production Systems: The Resolve AI Approach
    Sep 4 2025
    SummaryIn this episode of the AI Engineering Podcast, CEO of Resolve AI Spiros Xanthos shares his insights on building agentic capabilities for operational systems. He discusses the limitations of traditional observability tools and the need for AI agents that can reason through complex systems to provide actionable insights and solutions. The conversation highlights the architecture of Resolve AI, which integrates with existing tools to build a comprehensive understanding of production environments, and emphasizes the importance of context and memory in AI systems. Spiros also touches on the evolving role of AI in production systems, the potential for AI to augment human operators, and the need for continuous learning and adaptation to fully leverage these advancements.AnnouncementsHello and welcome to the AI Engineering Podcast, your guide to the fast-moving world of building scalable and maintainable AI systemsYour host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Spiros Xanthos about architecting agentic capabilities for operational challenges with managing production systems.InterviewIntroductionHow did you get involved in machine learning?Can you describe what Resolve AI is and the story behind it?We have decades of experience as an industry in managing operational complexity. What are the critical failures in capabilities that you are addressing with the application of AI?Given the existing capabilities of dedicated platforms (e.g. Grafana, PagerDuty, Splunk, etc), what is your reasoning for building a new system vs. a new feature of existing operational product?Over the past couple of years the industry has developed a growing number of agent patterns. What was your approach in evaluating and selecting a particular approach for your product?One of the complications of building any platform that supports operational needs of engineering teams is the complexity of integrating with their technology stack. This is doubly true when building an AI system that needs rich context. What are the core primitives that you are relying on to build a robust offering?How are you managing the learning process for your systems to allow for iterative discovery and improvement?What are your strategies for personalizing those discoveries to a given customer and operating environment?One of the interesting challenges in agentic systems is managing the user experience for human-in-the-loop and machine to human handoffs in each direction. How are you thinking about that, especially given the criticality of the systems that you are interacting with?As more of the code that is running in production environments is co-developed with AI, what impact do you anticipate on the overall operational resilience of the systems being monitored?One of the challenges of working with LLMs is the cold start problem where every conversation starts from scratch. How are you approaching the overall problem of context engineering and ensuring that you are consistently providing the necessary information for the model to be effective in its role?What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen Resolve AI used?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on Resolve AI?When is Resolve AI the wrong choice?What do you have planned for the future of Resolve AI?Contact InfoLinkedInParting QuestionFrom your perspective, what are the biggest gaps in tooling, technology, or training for AI systems today?Closing AnnouncementsThank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.__init__ covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The AI Engineering Podcast is your guide to the fast-moving world of building AI systems.Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email hosts@dataengineeringpodcast.com with your story.Closing AnnouncementsThank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. The Data Engineering Podcast covers the latest on modern data management. Podcast.__init__ covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used.Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email hosts@aiengineeringpodcast.com with your story.To help other people find the show please leave a review on iTunes and tell your friends and co-workers.LinksResolve AISplunkOpenTelemetrySplunk ObservabilityContext EngineeringGrafanaKubernetesPagerDutyThe intro and outro music is from Hitman's Lovesong feat. Paola Graziano by The Freak Fandango Orchestra/CC BY-SA 3.0
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    51 mins
  • Designing Scalable AI Systems with FastMCP: Challenges and Innovations

    Designing Scalable AI Systems with FastMCP: Challenges and Innovations
    Aug 26 2025
    SummaryIn this episode of the AI Engineering Podcast Jeremiah Lowin, founder and CEO of Prefect Technologies, talks about the FastMCP framework and the design of MCP servers. Jeremiah explains the evolution of FastMCP, from its initial creation as a simpler alternative to the MCP SDK to its current role in facilitating the deployment of AI tools. The discussion covers the complexities of designing MCP servers, the importance of context engineering, and the potential pitfalls of overwhelming AI agents with too many tools. Jeremiah also highlights the importance of simplicity and incremental adoption in software design, and shares insights into the future of MCP and the broader AI ecosystem. The episode concludes with a look at the challenges of authentication and authorization in AI applications and the exciting potential of MCP as a protocol for the future of AI-driven business logic.AnnouncementsHello and welcome to the AI Engineering Podcast, your guide to the fast-moving world of building scalable and maintainable AI systemsYour host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Jeremiah Lowin about the FastMCP framework and how to design and build your own MCP serversInterviewIntroductionHow did you get involved in machine learning?Can you start by describing what MCP is and its purpose in the ecosystem of AI applications?What is FastMCP and what motivated you to create it?Recognizing that MCP is relatively young, how would you characterize the landscape of MCP frameworks?What are some of the stumbling blocks on the path to building a well engineered MCP server?What are the potential ramifications of poorly designed and implemented MCP implementations?In the overall context of an AI-powered/agentic application, what are the tradeoffs of investing in the MCP protocol? (e.g. engineering effort, process isolation, tool creation, auth(n|z), etc.)In your experience, what are the architectural patterns that you see of MCP implementation and usage?There are a multitude of MCP servers available for a variety of use cases. What are the key factors that someone should be using to evaluate their viability for a production use case?Can you give an overview of the key characteristics of FastMCP and why someone might select it as their implementation target for a custom MCP server?How have the design, scope, and goals of the project evolved since you first started working on it?For someone who is using FastMCP as the framework for creating their own AI tools, what are some of the design considerations or best practices that they should be aware of?What are some of the ways that someone might consider integrating FastMCP into their existing Python-powered web applications (e.g. FastAPI, Django, Flask, etc.)As you continue to invest your time and energy into FastMCP, what is your overall goal for the project?What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen FastMCP used?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on FastMCP?When is FastMCP the wrong choice?What do you have planned for the future of FastMCP?Contact InfoLinkedInGitHubParting QuestionFrom your perspective, what are the biggest gaps in tooling, technology, or training for AI systems today?Closing AnnouncementsThank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. The Data Engineering Podcast covers the latest on modern data management. Podcast.__init__ covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used.Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email hosts@aiengineeringpodcast.com with your story.To help other people find the show please leave a review on iTunes and tell your friends and co-workers.LinksFastMCPFastMCP CloudPrefectModel Context Protocol (MCP)AI ToolsFastAPIPython DecoratorWebsocketsSSE == Server-Sent EventsStreamable HTTPOAuthMCP GatewayMCP SamplingFlaskDjangoASGIMCP ElicitationAuthKitDynamic Client RegistrationsmolagentsLarge Active ModelsA2AThe intro and outro music is from Hitman's Lovesong feat. Paola Graziano by The Freak Fandango Orchestra/CC BY-SA 3.0
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    1 hr and 14 mins
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