One of the best parts of my job at Kilo, and now Anaconda, is that I get to build for the builders.
That’s what devtools has always been about. Whether it was at GitLab, Netlify, or Kilo, I’ve loved working on products that make it easier for people to build software. Historically, those people were developers. They wrote code every day and identified as developers.
But LLMs have changed that. Devtools are no longer just for developers, because building software is no longer just for developers.
Building software is for everyone who wants to build software. For builders.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and it permeates how we’re continuing to build Kilo inside Anaconda. The team I lead is called “Builder Velocity.” I want the people we’re building for to be centered in the name of our team. Customer obsession is a little easier to remember when you have to say the customer’s name every time you introduce yourself.
In our weekly team call, I try to anchor us in who we’re building for, from our mascot to the work we’re prioritizing. It helps that we’re building tools with the tools we’re building: using Kilo to build Kilo, along with all the other things we’re working on in Builder Velocity and across Anaconda.
You learn a lot about your product when you’re depending on it to get your own work done.
OpenAI’s 2026 DevDay was a breath of fresh air in just how aligned we are on this: building for builders.
On a Tuesday with delightful San Francisco weather, I took a Waymo to Fort Mason Center (a must if you haven’t already). It’s hard to show up to a day like this without being a little excited when a car has just driven you there by itself.
I arrived early enough to drop off my suitcase, get breakfast, and get settled into the keynote. The keynote was a joy. Hearing about Dots, Spaces, and more was exciting, but the announcement I was most excited about was Sign in with ChatGPT.
The Kilo team wrote about the announcement here, including how you can connect your ChatGPT plan and use its included model access across Kilo’s coding surfaces.
I’m personally excited about this because I think a ChatGPT subscription is one of the best deals available for access to frontier OpenAI models. If you’re already paying for that subscription, being able to use it in Kilo makes it an even better deal.
I spend a lot of time thinking about AI spend and what people are getting for it. This is a very practical example of making that spend go further. You can bring the subscription you already have into the tool you want to build with and get to work.
And, of course, there was the joy of seeing Kilo on the screen behind Sam Altman.
I don’t think that part needs much explanation. Our team has worked incredibly hard on Kilo. Seeing it up there was special, and I was proud.
Another highlight was getting to meet the OpenAI team members we’ve been collaborating with so closely. There’s a particular joy in finally meeting someone you’ve already spent a lot of time working with. You get to put a face to the messages, spend some time together, and celebrate the thing you helped get out into the world.
I left DevDay excited to keep building.
The group of people who can build software is getting bigger. That means we have more people to build for, more things to learn about what they need, and more opportunities to make it easier for them to get something done.
That’s what I want Builder Velocity to keep coming back to. Who are we building for, and how do we help them build?
Getting to spend a day with people who are excited about the same question was a joy.