Let the Agent Cook — with Trevor Manz

Trevor Manz went from measuring plant apertures by hand in a wet lab to building the notebook that lets coding agents take the wheel. The creator of anywidget and founding engineer at marimo (marimo.io/pair) popped into The Test Set to spill on reactive notebooks, why marimo pair threw out every MCP tool but one, and what agents really want out of a data environment. This conversation also features a jacket bouncer, a hidden Python API, and Michael's slow-motion war with the word "marimo." Trevor Manz (founding engineer at marimo, creator of anywidget) joins Michael and Hadley to talk reactive notebooks, code mode, and why marimo.io/pair ships with only one agent tool. Bonus material: competitive swimming and mandatory dinner gowns at Cambridge. What's Inside: • Cell order doesn't matter in a reactive Python notebook • Wet-lab pipettes and Harvard's visualization group, via Raspberry Pi • The problem with building beautiful tools nobody actually uses • The reason marimo pair deleted every agent tool but one • Code mode: the hidden API humans aren't supposed to touch • What happens when you ship the API your LLM hallucinated