Transcript
00:00:00oh hey sorry you caught me listening to some spotify while using my spotify coding agent
00:00:07harness yeah spotify made a coding agent harness and it's actually not that bad it's called xurb
00:00:12and it lets you manage your clawed codex and gemini agents all in one place with a nice ui
00:00:16and it was built to help the over 1 300 spotify engineers manage their sessions and their projects
00:00:21i tried it out so you don't have to and spoiler alert i don't actually hate it but i don't think
00:00:26he'll use it so xurb is what's known as an agentic development environment it doesn't replace clawed
00:00:35codex or gemini it's just a place that you can manage those sessions probably know what i mean
00:00:39already if you use something like cmux conductor or t3 code the big difference with this one though
00:00:44is to get it set up you need to sign up with a spotify technology account which is not your spotify
00:00:49music account this is a completely separate thing and to be honest with you minus points already for
00:00:53needing an account lucky for you though i signed up so you don't have to and i think that's definitely
00:00:57worth a subscribe once you are logged in though this is the main home page of xurb and to be honest i
00:01:02don't really think you'll see this or use it much it's just an input box for your prompt and you can
00:01:05select the project to send that prompt to i've set up two of mine with xurb already or you can go ahead
00:01:10and add a new project as well besides that there's nothing too special on this page and the same goes for
00:01:14the all projects page this is just a list of the projects that you've set up in xurb with some details
00:01:18like the active sessions and total sessions and again you can start a new project in here as well
00:01:22where things start to get a little more interesting is we click inside one of these projects and we're
00:01:26taken to the project overview page now i'll be coming back to the features on here so i don't
00:01:30actually think this is the interesting part of xurb but what i do think is interesting is the sessions
00:01:34you can see down here that i have six active sessions one of them actually just finished some
00:01:38work and the rest of them are idle if i click into one of these like the one that just finished
00:01:42this is when we're taken to the sessions view this is basically just tmux with a nice ui
00:01:46so you can see our session is open here and it's just a normal instance of clawed code running
00:01:49inside of a terminal so it doesn't replace any of these tools it's just managing them and on the
00:01:54sidebar over here i can click between all of the sessions that have active on this project as well
00:01:58as all of my other projects too so this is the place that i'm going to be managing all of them
00:02:01at the moment though this view is requiring me to work one session at a time so i have to click the
00:02:05session in the sidebar to go to a new one so if i wanted to see multiple of them at the same time
00:02:09we can click the grid button up here and we're taken to a grid view if i then click the add all
00:02:13button you can see it moves some of my sessions into the grid layout so i can now manage four agents
00:02:16side by side really easily if you had a bigger monitor you can even take this further customizing
00:02:21just how many sessions you want in a grid and you can also drag these grid handles if you want to
00:02:24adjust how those columns and rows are laid out it's pretty flexible to whatever layout you like it also
00:02:29doesn't just have to be an agent session you can also open up a new terminal in here and then add
00:02:33that to the grid so you could be working by yourself here in your terminal while watching and managing
00:02:38your other agents i actually found this pretty easy to use i mean it's certainly nothing new you can
00:02:42achieve this with something like tmux configs or in something like cmux but if you're a gui user
00:02:47maybe this suits you and if you don't want to set up all of those other tools this is a pretty easy
00:02:50way to get started in fact i did notice you have to have tmux installed to actually use that so it
00:02:55might be a hint of what they're using under the hood now besides just the easy navigation of sessions
00:02:58there are a few cool and possibly unique features in this session view the first one is one that i've
00:03:03actually wanted for a long time in a lot of other apps and that is that you can fork sessions
00:03:07this will clone the entire session and all of the context and everything will go with it but now i can
00:03:11send a different message to each one as they are completely separate sessions this is really useful
00:03:15if you want to test things out but you don't want to lose the context of the thread that you already
00:03:19had you can actually take this context sharing even further and this feature is a little bit crazy but
00:03:23say i asked this clawed code session to run my review with my sub-agents then i realized clawed code
00:03:28did all of the coding so maybe i want to use codex to do the code review well i can actually just switch
00:03:32the agent this session is using midway through it retains all of the context and all of the chat
00:03:37history but it simply just migrates it from clawed code over to codex and everything stays working so
00:03:42i can simply say continue in here and it works all on codex like nothing changed this is definitely a
00:03:46feature that i hadn't seen before in any other app so let me know if you have but i must also admit i
00:03:50don't think i would use this too much i've gotten pretty used to matt pocock skills which rely on a
00:03:54lot of documentation and markdown files to describe everything going on in your code base so i've
00:03:59gotten pretty good at starting a new agent and not needing all of the context of one of my previous
00:04:03threads everything is just documented in the code base so the agent can discover it itself so this
00:04:08one doesn't really suit my workflow but it might suit yours better another feature that i think is
00:04:11unique to zerp or at least i hadn't seen before is this concept of dependent sessions if i click on
00:04:16this button here we'll actually start a new child work tree from that work tree i was already working
00:04:20in and this one will actually be waiting for that first session to finish up so if i type in the goal
00:04:24that i have here when the first session finishes this one will kick off so i can essentially chain
00:04:29the work that i want to do or you could actually just get started now and click start now to bypass
00:04:33the waiting again i think this is one of those features that shows how spotify engineers work but
00:04:37personally i don't think i would use this one too much what i would use though is dependent terminal
00:04:40sessions so this terminal session is going to be linked to the agent session which just means that
00:04:44it's open in the same work tree i'm working in the agent and it's also organized nicely in the
00:04:48sidebar so that's most of what zerp has when it comes to managing the agents themselves but
00:04:52the gui does also have some features to help you out with the whole process over on the right
00:04:56here we then have the git button so you can open up the git sidebar and see all of the files that
00:04:59have changed and if you click on any one of these it will also show you the diff view so you can go
00:05:03ahead and review the code that the agents are doing and the ui here definitely isn't too bad it's
00:05:08definitely usable but my only complaint is i really don't like the idea that this is full screen i kind
00:05:12of like the way that codex and t3 code do this where it shows the diffs in the sidebar as i tend to
00:05:17use it for a quick overview of what the agents are doing and when i want to do a full review i'd use
00:05:20something like prs on github on this toolbar there's also a browser button so you can open up a
00:05:24browser within these sessions here and see what the agent is currently working on but i must admit
00:05:28i couldn't work out if there was any way for the agent to actually control this browser or even read
00:05:32its console logs and there's no way for me to get to the developer tools so i don't think that i would
00:05:37use this after those two the rest of the buttons are mostly just helpers so opening up this project
00:05:41in your terminal or your usual code editor so that's basically it for the session management view
00:05:45but i want to quickly go through the project view as to be honest with you i don't find this part
00:05:49very helpful first on the overview here you have a prompt input box like we did on the main page but i
00:05:53find this pretty useless as i'm not able to tag any of my project skills or even reference any project
00:05:58files in here so unless i'm doing something wrong here i'd personally just spin up a new agent and
00:06:03prompt it myself after this on the overview page you then have a list of the active sessions that we
00:06:07saw earlier then some information about your work trees and a log of what's been going on at the top
00:06:11we can then switch this to the git tab again nothing really special here this is just that git viewer
00:06:15that we saw earlier but this time in this tab and we can also go over to the files tab which
00:06:19essentially just opens up an inbuilt editor which i suppose is pretty good if you want to make small
00:06:24edits but i'd rather use my own code editor if i was making larger changes finally after this you then
00:06:29also have your skills tab which currently isn't working for me i do actually have skills in this
00:06:33project but it doesn't seem to pick them up i don't know if that's because that's sim linked but on the
00:06:36rules tab we can see what it'd probably look like because here it's picked up my global clawed md as
00:06:41well as my project one and we can click in this and see what's inside of it as well as edit it as
00:06:44i said i just don't really find that view very useful i'd rather open up my own code editor if
00:06:48i wanted to see the git changes make any code changes or change any of my skills overall then
00:06:53i don't hate it it seems well made and i didn't really run into any bugs besides that skill one and
00:06:57i do kind of like some of the session management features the trouble for me is it's just not really
00:07:01any new features that would make me want to sign up for a spotify technology account
00:07:05and also to use an app that is closed source i personally prefer using t3 code which is open source and i
00:07:10just find the experience more polished with less clutter and everything just seems to work well for
00:07:14me and i'm kind of not someone that actually likes the grid view i like to see my sessions one by one
00:07:18kick them off and then go and do another task so i think this is more that i'm just not that target
00:07:22market if you actually look at the announcements they make they try and really heavily push this
00:07:26with another product that they have yes they have multiple development products this one is called
00:07:30portal and as far as i can tell it's meant to help you out with extremely large organizations
00:07:34with multiple things being worked on at once across multiple projects and they made zirp tie into that
00:07:39so it can grab all of the relevant context for the project that you're currently working on
00:07:43so i can see why spotify built this for their needs but i can't see why i would use this
00:07:47what do you think let me know in the comments down below
00:07:49where they subscribe and as always see you in the next one
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