Behind the Craft

Agentic Engineering, Clearly Explained in 50 Min | Matt Van Horn

Behind the Craft

Show Notes

Matt has no CS degree, doesn’t know how to code, and doesn’t even read the plans that AI writes. Despite this, he’s built an incredible open source track record with projects like last30days (#1 trending on GitHub with 40K+ stars) and Printing Press (a tool that lets agents use any website or app). Matt has been a huge inspiration for my AI builder journey, and I think you’ll feel the same after watching our conversation. Matt and I talked about: (00:00) "I don't read code and the plans are for AI" (01:19) Compound Engineering: Matt’s go-to agentic loop (07:07) How Matt builds without a CS degree or reading code (11:18) Printing Press: Turning any website into an agent CLI (15:38) How Printing Press finds hidden APIs and GitHub projects (22:44) Why CLI + skill beats MCP for agent workflows (32:49) How Matt contributes to Python, Go, and other top repos (44:28) Why Matt is still afraid to launch finished projects Thanks to our sponsors: Linear: The AI agent platform for modern teams https://linear.app/behind-the-craft Wispr Flow: 4x faster than typing with your voice https://ref.wisprflow.ai/peteryang Riverside: All-in-one AI studio for podcasts and video https://creators.riverside.com/PeterYang 📌 Get the takeaways: https://creatoreconomy.so/p/the-ai-agent-system-behind-this-non-technical-founder-matt-van-horn 📌 Get my personal AI operating system with all my skills and prompts: https://www.behindthecraft.com/ Where to find Matt: X: https://x.com/mvanhorn GitHub: https://github.com/mvanhorn Printing Press: https://printingpress.dev last30days: https://github.com/mvanhorn/last30days-skill Subscribe to this channel - more interviews coming soon!

More from Behind the Craft

Oct 18, 2026

Pomp and I worked together at Facebook a decade ago before he became an investor, best-selling author, and public company CEO with an audience of 3.3M. We had a great chat about how to build an extraordinary career and life and how he's building Silvia, an AI CFO for independent investors, to take on the AI labs.

Oct 11, 2026

Micky is a full-stack engineer who has taught 100K+ people how to build with AI. In our episode, he walked me through his 4-step agentic engineering workflow to avoid pumping out slop: Isolate every task, build to a clear structure, prove via validation loops, and ship after agents review your PRs or escalate to you for a manual look.

Oct 4, 2026

Sam is the co-founder of Granola, the AI meeting notes app now valued at $1.5B. Granola has helped me survive (and even enjoy) countless meetings, so I was excited to learn how Sam uses AI to show up prepared. We also talked about building an AI-native company without the 996 grind and what design means when agents skip your app entirely.

Sep 27, 2026

Copy my best AI workflows to save time and automate busywork: https://www.behindthecraft.com 🤝 Subscribe to my practical AI newsletter read by 150K+ professionals: https://creatoreconomy.so

Sep 20, 2026

Ethan is the product lead for ChatGPT Finances at OpenAI. He previously co-founded Digit, which helped more than 10 million people save over $9 billion. In our interview, he shared six practical ways to use ChatGPT to find wasted spending, save money on taxes, maximize credit card rewards, and model major financial decisions. I’m confident at least one of these use cases will save you money today.

See all episodes →