If you can ship anything, you shouldn't ship everything ft. Pranay Prakash, eng leader at Vercel

Writing code isn't the bottleneck anymore. So what is? Pranay Prakash, engineering leader at Vercel, has a clear answer: taste. In this episode, Pranay and host Emma Webb get into what it means to ship tasteful software in an era where you can ship almost anything, how Vercel maintains its famously high bar for developer experience at nearly 800 people, and why the answer to scaling taste across an org isn't more process. It's obsession. They also get into durable agents and what Vercel Workflows unlocks for teams building long running agentic systems, what a taste linter actually looks like in practice, and Pranay's surprisingly calming take on the pace of change: the fundamentals haven't changed. Go to Nicaragua for a year. You'll be fine. If you're an engineering leader thinking about quality, taste, and what it means to build well in the agentic era, this one's for you. Have someone you want us to interview or a topic you want us to cover? Let us know on X or LinkedIn.