Descriptions:
Peter Stainberger — creator of PSPDFKit, the PDF framework running on over one billion devices — joins The Pragmatic Engineer to describe a development workflow that would have seemed implausible a few years ago: shipping code he hasn’t read. After burning out and stepping away from tech for three years, Stainberger returned to build Clawbot, a personal AI assistant project, using between five and ten AI agents running in parallel.
The conversation digs into his firsthand comparison between Claude Code and OpenAI Codex, explaining why he prefers Codex for complex multi-file edits — it spends more time reading the codebase before acting, whereas Claude Code requires more explicit steering to build a complete picture. His “closing the loop” principle distinguishes productive AI-assisted development from frustrating vibe coding, and he argues that code reviews are effectively dead, with pull requests better understood as prompt requests.
Stainberger also discusses the collaborative dynamic he cultivates with AI agents — spending significant time discussing options and architecture before issuing build commands — positioning himself as the system architect while the model handles line-by-line implementation. The episode is one of the more candid accounts available from a high-output developer who has genuinely restructured his entire practice around AI, and offers specific, reproducible framing for anyone trying to move past basic AI-assisted coding into something more systematic.
📺 Source: The Pragmatic Engineer · Published January 28, 2026
🏷️ Format: Interview
