
Building the Backbone of AI Agents: Telemetry, Open Source, and the Future of Developer Infrastructure with Brian Douglas
From Screaming in the Cloud by Corey Quinn
April 30, 2026 · 29 min · Episode 673
About this episode
Corey Quinn interviews Brian Douglas about the infrastructure and telemetry needed for AI agents and the role of open source in developer tooling.
AI agents are moving fast, but the infrastructure behind them is still catching up. In this episode of Screaming in the Cloud , Corey Quinn sits down with Paper Compute CEO Brian “B Dougie” Douglas to explore building telemetry for AI agents, open-source infrastructure, token economics, and what it takes to create developer tooling in the AI era. From local-first observability to agent runtimes and the future of AI workflows, this conversation dives into what’s next for AI-powered development. Show highlights: (00:00) Open Source Trust Signal (00:16) Show Intro and Sponsor (01:07) What Paper Compute Builds (01:55) Telemetry for Agents Explained (04:10) Local First Data and Sharing (06:18) Second Time Founder Story (09:06) Token Costs and Pricing Psychology (14:20) Stereos VM and Safer Runtimes (20:34) Open Source Strategy and Vibe Coding (24:54) Whats Next and Wrap Up About Brian: Brian is the founder of the Paper Compute Company, a distributed systems primitives for AI agents. Brian previously founded Open Sauced, a company dedicated to increasing knowledge and insights of open-source communities. In 2024, Open Sauced joined the Linux Foundation, further solidifying Brian’s…
People in this episode
Host: Corey Quinn
Guest: Brian Douglas
Topics covered
- AI agents
- infrastructure
- open source
- developer tooling
- telemetry
- token economics
Keywords
- AI infrastructure
- telemetry
- open source
- developer tooling
- token economics
- observability
- agent runtimes
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Paper Compute, Open Sauced, Linux Foundation, GitHub
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