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← Empower Apps12 jul · 51 min

Practical Agents with Donny Wals

Practical Agents with Donny Wals12 jul51 min

Donny Wals returns to talk through a year of agentic coding. We go through how it's changed his architecture decisions, reviewing PRs he didn't write himself, managing tasks and context across parallel agents, and the gym-workout crash he fixed from his phone mid-set — plus where he still doesn't trust the agent: SwiftData migrations.

Guest

Donny WalsDonny Wals 👾 (@donnywals.bsky.social) — BlueskyDonny Wals 👾 (@DonnyWals) / XDonny Wals (@donnywalsdev) • Instagram photos and videosdonny wals - YouTubeDonny Wals (@donnywals@chaos.social) - chaos.socialDonny Wals | LinkedInRelated Links

Cursor - https://cursor.comBitrise - https://bitrise.ioNotion - https://notion.soRaycast - https://raycast.comGrill with Docs - https://www.aihero.dev/grill-with-docsMaxine - One Rep Max Tracker (Donny's workout app) - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/maxine-one-rep-max-tracker/id6615073254GRDB.swift - https://github.com/groue/GRDB.swiftSundialKit (Leo's watch communication library) - https://github.com/brightdigit/SundialKitFluent (Vapor's ORM) - https://docs.vapor.codes/fluent/overview/NSPersistentCloudKitContainer - https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coredata/nspersistentcloudkitcontainerPractical Core Data - https://practicalcoredata.comPractical Combine - https://practicalcombine.comPractical Swift Concurrency - https://practicalswiftconcurrency.comRelated Episodes

Independence UpdateEveryone Thinks They're Good at Prompting with Joe Fabisevich120% Likely with Cihat GündüzPlatforms State of the Union 2026 with Peter WithamActually Really UsefulPractical Year - Part 2 with Donny WalsPractical Year - Part 1 with Donny WalsPractical Entrepreneur with Donny WalsPractical Combine with Donny WalsChapters

(00:00) - The Agentic Coding Shift

(15:55) - The Gym Crash Story

(20:54) - Architecting for Agents

(34:04) - Task & Issue Tracking

(37:40) - Core Data vs. SwiftData

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