This week I’m talking with Max Stoiber, currently working on ChatGPT’s plugin directory and app platform at OpenAI. We discuss the hundreds of open source projects nobody remembers alongside the big ones like react-boilerplate and styled-components, how Spectrum became part of GitHub and eventually helped shape GitHub Discussions, the founder growth that came from building Stellate, the GraphQL cache that turned into a dual acquisition by Shopify and The Guild, and why ChatGPT apps feel like a new surface for software.

Featuring

Sponsors

Coder.com – Secure environments where devs and agents work in parallel. Open by design. Secure by default.

WorkOS – Auth for CLI with AuthKit from WorkOS — Bring secure browser-based login to your terminal apps using the OAuth Device Flow, with the same polished AuthKit experience plus SSO, MFA, and passkeys. Learn more at WorkOS.com and AuthKit.com

Notion – Custom Agents that automate the busywork so your team can focus on real work. Try them free at notion.com/changelog

Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps close to your users — global Anycast load-balancing, zero-configuration private networking, hardware isolation, and instant WireGuard VPN connections. Push-button deployments that scale to thousands of instances. Check out the speedrun to get started in minutes.

Notes & Links

📝 Edit Notes

Chapters

1 00:00 This week on The Changelog 00:52
2 00:52 Sponsor: Coder.com 03:12
3 04:09 Start the show! 01:38
4 05:48 Max's drive to make things to solve his own problems 02:26
5 08:14 Why for free instead of charging? 02:00
6 10:14 Does it still make sense to share work for free in the current world? 04:14
7 14:28 Even if the value isn't in writing code, it's still worth it to share things with the world 00:18
8 14:45 Building things is still hard work 03:51
9 18:36 The history of Spectrum and Spec.fm 04:33
10 23:09 Sponsor: WorkOS 03:03
11 26:12 How Max joined the Spectrum team 04:52
12 31:04 Joining GitHub and the origins of GitHub Discussions 02:01
13 33:05 Any regrets about the outcome of Spectrum and Github Discussions? 03:28
14 36:33 Exploring the idea of buying Spectrum back 02:11
15 38:45 Reflecting on the time spent working at GitHub 01:23
16 40:08 What Max worked on after GitHub 04:27
17 44:35 The challenges of building a good team 05:03
18 49:38 Learning how to provide good critical feedback 00:27
19 50:05 Using the COINS framework for feedback 03:48
20 53:53 The benefits of providing better feedback 02:08
21 56:00 Building Stellate 07:20
22 1:03:20 Sponsor: Notion 01:42
23 1:05:03 Why Stellate's caching worked so well: Partial Query Caching deep dive 02:34
24 1:07:37 Is GraphQL still popular? 01:39
25 1:09:16 The danger of building a good product for a undersized market 04:12
26 1:13:27 Managing a dual aquisition for Stellate 06:27
27 1:19:54 Moving from Stellate to Shopify and discovering the right role 03:11
28 1:23:05 Why Max chose to work on Shopify's Liquid Storefronts 03:29
29 1:26:34 Why Max decided to join OpenAI 02:58
30 1:29:32 What Max is working on at OpenAI 04:15
31 1:33:47 MCP Apps deep dive (MCP server for UI) 03:45
32 1:37:32 Are MCP Apps a potential replacement for building a website? 05:13
33 1:42:45 Max's closing thoughts 02:28
34 1:45:13 Closing thoughts and stuff 01:13

Transcript

⏰ Coming Soon

We're hard at work on the transcript for this episode! Sign in / up to access transcript notifications. 💪