Podcast
Agentic DevOps : AI Engineering for Infrastructure
Hosted by Bret Fisher · EN
Where LLMs, AI Agents, and MCP tools meet DevOps and platform engineering. How can we humans use non-deterministic, often hallucinating LLMs to automate our infrastructure and help us with the job of software lifecycle management? I’m Bret Fisher, and this is the Agentic DevOps podcast. After the invention of AI Agents and the MCP standard in late 2024, I started this podcast in early '25 with a narrow topic focus… to document and advise how AI Agents, MCP tools, and large language models can be used in the real world for assisting with DevOps automation, platform engineering, and day to day systems operations… a podcast series hopefully without the hand-wavy AI hype or dreams of a pure AI workforce. I'm joined by my co-host, Nirmal Mehta, and expert guests trying to make use of crazy texting robots.
11episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
AI SREs, Chat With Your Infrastructure with Anyshift
May 600:54:18Tap to summarizeBret’s joined by the Anyshift.io co-founders, Roxane Fischer and Stephane Jourdan to discuss how an always-on SRE agent can help you proactively find risks and avoid incidents.🙌 The Agentic DevOps Guild has launched! It's a training + community + mentorship program for engineers wanting to learn the latest CI/CD automation and dive into Agentic DevOps. Meetups are happening now, with new course videos dropping every few weeks. Join the Guild and become your team's leader in AI for infrastructure automation https://www.bretfisher.com/theguild 🍾This edited version is from my live stream show Apr 9, 2026: https://www.youtube.com/live/-DHZwxXigYI?si=9JnQYp8UZG27Bp2X&t=232 ★Show Links★Anyshift websiteAnnie CLIBlog post: Agentic Context Engineering in Production: How AI Agents Build Institutional ExpertiseCreators & Guests Bret Fisher - Host Beth Fisher - Producer Cristi Cotovan - Editor Roxane Fischer - Guest Stephane Jourdan - Guest You can also support this podcast by subscribing to my YouTube channel and my weekly newsletter at bret.news!Grab the best coupons for my Docker and Kubernetes courses on Udemy. Join my cloud native DevOps community on Discord.Grab some merch at Bret's Loot BoxHomepage bretfisher.com (00:00) - Introduction (03:09) - Meet Anyshift and the big idea (03:29) - When Was Anyshift Created? (07:13) - Context graphs and agent workflows (26:48) - Permissions and Auditing (30:33) - Memory and Context Graph (49:24) - Roadmap and Wrap Up ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
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Can AI Agents Safely Become DevOps Engineers?
Apr 2901:21:34Tap to summarizeSam Alba, co-founder of Mendral, joins the show to discuss their new AI agents that act as “junior devops engineers” against GitHub Actions, security, failed tests, and more.Check out the video podcast version here: https://youtu.be/zHmE6VpWD7o🙌 The Agentic DevOps Guild has launched! It's a training + community + mentorship program for engineers wanting to learn the latest CI/CD automation and dive into Agentic DevOps. Meetups are happening now, with new course videos dropping every few weeks. Join the Guild and become your team's leader in AI for infrastructure automation https://www.bretfisher.com/theguild 🍾★Show Links★Mendral websiteCreators & Guests Bret Fisher - Host Beth Fisher - Producer Cristi Cotovan - Editor Sam Alba - Guest You can also support this podcast by subscribing to my YouTube channel and my weekly newsletter at bret.news!Grab the best coupons for my Docker and Kubernetes courses on Udemy. Join my cloud native DevOps community on Discord.Grab some merch at Bret's Loot BoxHomepage bretfisher.com (00:00) - Introduction (05:16) - Why CI Needs Agents (20:18) - How Mendral Learns and Automates (44:21) - Trusting Auto Merge (51:52) - Guardrails And Delivery (01:00:17) - Harnesses And CLI Future (01:11:27) - Future of Mendral ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
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Our Favorite Agent Setups
Apr 1401:05:55Tap to summarizeMy friend Brian Christner (Docker Captain alum) and I go through our AI harnesses, agents, models, and what we’re playing with right now. OpenClaw, OpenCode, Claude Code, Copilot, and all of it.Check out the video podcast version here: https://youtu.be/8AFE0kxaY2k🙌 The Agentic DevOps Guild has launched! It's a training + community + mentorship program for engineers wanting to learn the latest CI/CD automation and dive into Agentic DevOps. Meetups are happening now, with new course videos dropping every few weeks. Join the Guild and become your team's leader in AI for infrastructure automation https://www.bretfisher.com/theguild 🍾★Show Links★Brian’s NewsletterAgents & Claude Code SetupAwesome Claude Code SubagentsAgency AgentsClaude Code CourseOpenClaw alternativeBrian’s OpenClaw ProjectsOpenClaw Security ChecklistGarmin Connect SkillOpenClaw Security Dashboard SkillCreators & Guests Bret Fisher - Host Beth Fisher - Producer Cristi Cotovan - Editor Brian Christner - Guest You can also support this podcast by subscribing to my YouTube channel and my weekly newsletter at bret.news!Grab the best coupons for my Docker and Kubernetes courses on Udemy. Join my cloud native DevOps community on Discord.Grab some merch at Bret's Loot BoxHomepage bretfisher.com (00:00) - Introduction (03:01) - AI Tools and Skills Deep Dive (33:09) - Securing OpenClaw Servers (39:15) - Safe Use Cases and Token Control (50:00) - OpenClaw DOs and DON'Ts (55:28) - NanoClaw and Container Future ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
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Four Months Felt Like Four Years
Mar 2601:00:52Tap to summarizeIt’s been 6 months since the last episode, and it feels like everything has changed. Bret and Nirmal catch you up on the increasing pace of AI change, how it will likely affect DevOps engineers and platform builders, and what’s coming on the podcast.Check out the video podcast version here: https://youtu.be/NkqAMAIW5ks🙌 The Agentic DevOps Guild has launched! It's a training + community + mentorship program for engineers wanting to learn the latest CI/CD automation and dive into Agentic DevOps. Meetups are happening now, with new course videos dropping every few weeks. Join the Guild and become your team's leader in AI for infrastructure automation https://www.bretfisher.com/theguild 🍾★Show Links★Agent Harness Skills https://agentskills.ioVideo of Gradel CEO "You can write code faster, can you deliver it faster?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOXNJ9_sHuMIs your team still hand-chiseling code? https://www.geocod.io/code-and-coordinates/2026-01-21-hand-chiseling-code/Creators & Guests Bret Fisher - Host Beth Fisher - Producer Cristi Cotovan - Editor Nirmal Mehta - Host You can also support this podcast by subscribing to my YouTube channel and my weekly newsletter at bret.news!Grab the best coupons for my Docker and Kubernetes courses on Udemy. Join my cloud native DevOps community on Discord.Grab some merch at Bret's Loot BoxHomepage bretfisher.com (00:00) - ADOP - Feb 26, 2026 (02:23) - Introduction (03:00) - Season Two Kickoff (04:34) - Productivity Debate and Two AI Camps (06:48) - Ops View from Dev Retreats (10:05) - Automation Debt and App Tsunami (16:29) - Frontier Models Changed Everything (22:29) - Red Pill vs Blue Pill Skepticism (25:31) - Three Focus Areas for DevOps (27:51) - GitHub Copilot and Agentic Workflows (31:17) - Harnesses That Run Longer (31:51) - Skills As SOPs (34:30) - Guardrails For App Tsunami (36:30) - Agent Orchestration a nd Kubernetes (37:50) - Shadow IT Goes AI (38:30) - Inner Loop Diagram Breakdown (40:54) - AI Code Review Councils (43:09) - Context Layer And Docs Debt (49:23) - Career Waves to Agent Ops (57:29) - Future Guests and Episodes (01:00:45) - ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
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AI Hype vs. Reality. Real Stats from Laura Tacho, CTO of DX
Sep 2501:20:03Tap to summarizeBret and Nirmal are joined by Laura Tacho, CTO at DX and long-time friend of the show, to discuss AI usage and success in teams adopting AI and Agents to generate code and perform tasks.🙌 The Agentic DevOps Guild has launched! It's a training + community + mentorship program for engineers wanting to learn the latest CI/CD automation and dive into Agentic DevOps. Meetups are happening now, with new course videos dropping every few weeks. Join the Guild and become your team's leader in AI for infrastructure automation https://www.bretfisher.com/theguild 🍾We finally have some real data on this topic, and Laura Tacho in her role at DX, the developer experience company, has been studying AI successes and failures in the industry and has released a framework to measure AI impact in an orgs software lifecycle. Check out the video podcast version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G_TWLHkj7U★Show Links★AI Measurement FrameworkDX Core 4 FrameworkApplying the Core 4 FrameworkCreators & Guests Bret Fisher - Host Beth Fisher - Producer Cristi Cotovan - Editor Nirmal Mehta - Host Laura Tacho - Guest (00:00) - Teaser (03:05) - Welcome (04:58) - AI Measurement Framework (07:40) - Distilling Fact from Fiction with AI (25:59) - Skepticism and Adoption of AI Tools (28:37) - Measuring AI Impact on Developer Work (49:47) - Assisted vs Agentic (56:39) - More Gains from Training Humans on AI (01:05:16) - Measuring AI's Impact (01:10:55) - Context Switching (01:14:20) - Navigating AI Hype and Reality You can also support this podcast by subscribing to my YouTube channel and my weekly newsletter at bret.news!Grab the best coupons for my Docker and Kubernetes courses on Udemy. Join my cloud native DevOps community on Discord.Grab some merch at Bret's Loot BoxHomepage bretfisher.com ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
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My Favorite AI Terminal, Prompt Injection, and More
Aug 100:30:03Tap to summarizeIn this episode, I walk though some of my favorite new AI tools and content.🙌 The Agentic DevOps Guild has launched! It's a training + community + mentorship program for engineers wanting to learn the latest CI/CD automation and dive into Agentic DevOps. Meetups are happening now, with new course videos dropping every few weeks. Join the Guild and become your team's leader in AI for infrastructure automation https://www.bretfisher.com/theguild 🍾Resources and Topics mentioned in this episode:My AI Skeptic Friends are All Nuts, blog post from fly.io by Thomas PtacekFrom Toil to Triumph: Harnessing Agentic AI to Streamline Infrastructure as Code, KubeCon video by Jody VarneyThe Dark Side of Just Hooking Up AI Agents to GitHub, blog post by Simon Maple from AI Native DevWarp 2.0Warp 2.0 walkthroughContainer Use projectDevstral release in MayThe latest Devstral releaseSWE Bench Creators & Guests Bret Fisher - Host Beth Fisher - Producer Cristi Cotovan - Editor (00:00) - Intro (01:51) - High Fives Meetup (03:18) - Warp 2.0 Terminal (11:27) - Container Use and AI Agents (12:41) - Dagger's Container Use (15:10) - Comparing Free and Foundational AI Models on SWE Bench (22:09) - Insights from Videos and Blog Posts (25:11) - Security Concerns with AI Agents You can also support this podcast by subscribing to my YouTube channel and my weekly newsletter at bret.news!Grab the best coupons for my Docker and Kubernetes courses on Udemy. Join my cloud native DevOps community on Discord.Grab some merch at Bret's Loot BoxHomepage bretfisher.com ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
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AWS Agentic DevOps with the EKS MCP Server
Jul 2201:01:01Tap to summarizeBret and Nirmal are joined by Rajdeep Saha from AWS to discuss AI agents and the MCP (Model Context Protocol) standard. In this episode, they explore how AI can manage infrastructure with ease and demonstrate creating Kubernetes clusters with a single prompt.🙌 The Agentic DevOps Guild has launched! It's a training + community + mentorship program for engineers wanting to learn the latest CI/CD automation and dive into Agentic DevOps. Meetups are happening now, with new course videos dropping every few weeks. Join the Guild and become your team's leader in AI for infrastructure automation https://www.bretfisher.com/theguild 🍾We demonstrate AWS's new MCP server for EKS, showing how AI agents can create Kubernetes clusters and deploy applications with simple English prompts. Using Claude Sonnet 4 through the Cline VS Code extension, Raj creates an entire EKS cluster with CloudFormation, deploys a workload, and demonstrates how the AI automatically troubleshoots and fixes deployment issues - all without touching kubectl or writing YAML manually.We explore the Model Context Protocol (MCP) standard and how it enables AI agents to dynamically discover and use tools, from AWS services to cost calculators. We discuss the security implications of giving AI write access to AWS accounts, the challenges of context window management, and why local LLMs struggle with complex agentic workflows compared to foundational models like Claude.We cover emerging standards, particularly Google's Agent-to-Agent (A2A) protocol that was recently donated to CNCF. This complements MCP by standardizing how agents communicate with each other, potentially leading to agent marketplaces where specialized agents can collaborate on complex tasks.We stress the need for proper security guardrails, best practices, and organizational readiness. As Raj puts it, "Gen AI is an awesome white horse, but you still need Gandalf to ride it."Looking ahead, we predict rapid evolution in agentic frameworks, multi-agent support, and standardized authentication. For DevOps professionals, the bar is rising - tasks that once took a week may soon be expected in two days with AI assistance. It is becoming crucial to understand these tools before they reach mainstream.Check out the video podcast version here: https://youtu.be/dAkNUoZ_xtwCreators & Guests Bret Fisher - Host Beth Fisher - Producer Cristi Cotovan - Editor Nirmal Mehta - Host Rajdeep Saha - Guest (00:00) - Introduction (05:28) - Why Use Cline with VS Code? (15:56) - Security and Best Practices (17:41) - MCP "Marketplaces" (25:39) - Understanding MCP Endpoint Calls (27:08) - AWS Account Communication and Tool Access (27:35) - Cost Estimation with Serverless MCP (28:38) - Agentic Systems and Iterative Feedback Loops (30:58) - Deploying and Debugging with EKS MCP Server (33:36) - Challenges with LLMs in Troubleshooting (40:27) - Agent to Agent Communication (A2A) (47:27) - Anticipating Future Developments (48:04) - Practical Advice for Cloud Engineers (51:57) - Amazon Q (59:02) - Conclusion and Final Thoughts You can also support this podcast by subscribing to my YouTube channel and my weekly newsletter at bret.news!Grab the best coupons for my Docker and Kubernetes courses on Udemy. Join my cloud native DevOps community on Discord.Grab some merch at Bret's Loot BoxHomepage bretfisher.com ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
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Agentic CI/CD with Solomon Hykes of Dagger
Jul 1401:18:37Tap to summarizeBret and Nirmal discuss the intersection of AI agents and DevOps with Solomon Hykes, co-founder of Dagger and Docker. Solomon introduces Container Use, an open-source MCP server that gives coding agents isolated, containerized environments to work in, solving the critical problem of agents interfering with each other when running on the same system.🙌 The Agentic DevOps Guild has launched! It's a training + community + mentorship program for engineers wanting to learn the latest CI/CD automation and dive into Agentic DevOps. Meetups are happening now, with new course videos dropping every few weeks. Join the Guild and become your team's leader in AI for infrastructure automation https://www.bretfisher.com/theguild 🍾Also in this episode, we explore how AI agents are forcing a fundamental shift in CI/CD practices, with Solomon making the case that traditional CI/CD as we know it will disappear because agents develop 100x faster than humans and can't tolerate slow, unrepeatable build processes. Container Use enables developers to run multiple coding agents in parallel, each in their own sandboxed environment.We examine the emerging MCP ecosystem and its potential trajectory, drawing parallels to how containers evolved from developer tools to infrastructure platforms. Solomon warns about the rapid "gatekeeping" phase already happening with MCP, where vendors rush to lock down and monetize what started as an open developer innovation space.Other topics we touch on are: the four core components of agentic workflows, security challenges with untrusted text injection (the new "SQL injection" problem), token cost management, and the importance of balancing proprietary AI services with open-source infrastructure layers.Check out the video podcast version here: https://youtu.be/ZSbCPIAKGlcCreators & Guests Bret Fisher - Host Beth Fisher - Producer Cristi Cotovan - Editor Nirmal Mehta - Host Solomon Hykes - Guest (00:00) - Intro (07:51) - MCP Server and Integration (17:37) - Future of CI/CD and Agentic Workflows (21:02) - Four Areas of Concern (26:55) - The New Gatekeepers (47:49) - Token Costs vs Efficiency (49:29) - Balancing Open Source and Proprietary Systems (50:07) - The Rise of Kubernetes and MCP (51:01) - Security Concerns with LLMs and MCP (56:19) - Advice for Developers in a Rapidly Changing Landscape (59:51) - Introducing Container Use into Your Workflow (01:03:09) - The Future of AI and DevOps (01:09:57) - Coding Agent Blind Spots (01:14:23) - Scaling with Dagger and Kubernetes (01:16:27) - The Dagger Community You can also support this podcast by subscribing to my YouTube channel and my weekly newsletter at bret.news!Grab the best coupons for my Docker and Kubernetes courses on Udemy. Join my cloud native DevOps community on Discord.Grab some merch at Bret's Loot BoxHomepage bretfisher.com ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
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Running AI MCP Tools on Kubernetes with kagent
Jul 900:43:24Tap to summarizeBret and Nirmal explore AI agents in Kubernetes with Eitan Yarmush, Senior Architect at Solo.io. Eitan explains how AI agents work through three simple components (system prompts, LLMs, and tools), and demonstrates the kagent project, which provides a Kubernetes-native way to deploy and manage AI workflows.🙌 The Agentic DevOps Guild has launched! It's a training + community + mentorship program for engineers wanting to learn the latest CI/CD automation and dive into Agentic DevOps. Meetups are happening now, with new course videos dropping every few weeks. Join the Guild and become your team's leader in AI for infrastructure automation https://www.bretfisher.com/theguild 🍾Also in this episode, we cover the Model Context Protocol (MCP), which standardizes how agents communicate with external tools, along with practical use cases like incident response, debugging workflows, and CI/CD integration. Eitan shows how to create an agent through a web interface.We also address the challenges including security concerns (MCP lacks built-in security standards), cost considerations, and technical limitations like context window constraints. Check out the video podcast version here: https://youtu.be/JTTqG5SOpWYCreators & Guests Bret Fisher - Host Beth Fisher - Producer Cristi Cotovan - Editor Nirmal Mehta - Host Eitan Yarmush - Guest (00:00) - Intro (06:53) - Hype vs Reality (08:45) - Incident Response and Debugging (12:03) - Defining Agents and MCP (17:50) - Where Do You Run Agents? (20:54) - What Problem does kagent Solve? (31:22) - Authentication and Tool Limitations You can also support this podcast by subscribing to my YouTube channel and my weekly newsletter at bret.news!Grab the best coupons for my Docker and Kubernetes courses on Udemy. Join my cloud native DevOps community on Discord.Grab some merch at Bret's Loot BoxHomepage bretfisher.com ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
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Is AI ready for DevOps?
Jun 3, 202500:27:57Tap to summarizeBret and Nirmal are at KubeCon London and record their ideas about how AI Agents are about to change DevOps, platform engineering, SRE, automation, troubleshooting, and more.🙌 The Agentic DevOps Guild has launched! It's a training + community + mentorship program for engineers wanting to learn the latest CI/CD automation and dive into Agentic DevOps. Meetups are happening now, with new course videos dropping every few weeks. Join the Guild and become your team's leader in AI for infrastructure automation https://www.bretfisher.com/theguild 🍾Creators & Guests Bret Fisher - Host Beth Fisher - Producer Cristi Cotovan - Editor Nirmal Mehta - Host (00:00) - Intro (05:27) - Understanding AI Agents (12:10) - The Future of AI in DevOps (19:25) - Concluding Thoughts and Future Episodes You can also support this podcast by subscribing to my YouTube channel and my weekly newsletter at bret.news!Grab the best coupons for my Docker and Kubernetes courses on Udemy. Join my cloud native DevOps community on Discord.Grab some merch at Bret's Loot BoxHomepage bretfisher.com ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
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