E199: Rethinking Infra-as-Code for the AI Era

E199: Rethinking Infra-as-Code for the AI Era

July 14, 2026 · 42 min

About this episode

The episode discusses the challenges of traditional infrastructure-as-code tools and introduces Formae as a solution for the AI era.

This Open Source Startup Podcast episode has our co-hosts Robby and Tim in conversation with Pavlo Baron from Platform Engineering Labs - creators of open source infra-as-code platform formae . This podcast explores why traditional infrastructure-as-code tools like Terraform and Pulumi can struggle with state, drift, and the disconnect between code and real-world infrastructure. Pavlo shares lessons from building Instana and explains how those experiences led to Formae, an open-source approach that treats infrastructure state as accessible, executable code using Apple’s Pkl language. The conversation also looks at what infrastructure management needs in the AI era. By reducing low-level complexity and giving both humans and AI agents safer abstractions for discovering, modifying, and reconciling infrastructure, Formae aims to make infrastructure automation more reliable and less labor-intensive.

People in this episode

Hosts: Robby, Tim

Guest: Pavlo Baron

Topics covered

Keywords

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Platform Engineering Labs

Products: formae, Terraform, Pulumi, Instana, Apple’s Pkl language

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