Building OpenCode with Dax Raad

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OpenCode is one of the fastest-growing AI developer tools around, surging in just a few months from roughly 650,000 monthly active users to nearly 8 million, and almost 1M daily active users.

In this episode of The Pragmatic Engineer Podcast, we meet Dax Raad, co-founder of OpenCode, for a discussion about the gaps in developer tooling that led him to build OpenCode, the advantages of open source, and why taste and engineering judgment matter even more as AI becomes a core part of software development.

We also cover how OpenCode turned Anthropic’s blocking of integration with Claude Code into a massive growth lever by partnering with OpenAI and other model providers, why GPU demand is becoming a bottleneck everywhere, how come AI coding tools don’t automatically mean engineering teams move faster, and also why Dax is personally skeptical about predictions for the future of engineering and work, in general.

I found this conversation especially interesting because Dax displays a healthy skepticism toward the benefits of AI, even while building one of the most popular AI coding harnesses.

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Timestamps

00:00 Intro

07:03 Dax’s path into tech

09:04 Early startup experience

13:16 Getting involved with open source

16:13 OpenCode

23:17 Anthropic banning OpenCode

30:34 From terminal to GUI

32:34 OpenCode’s business model

36:33 Why inference is profitable

39:11 GPU bottlenecks

40:54 AI hype

45:50 AI spending

48:47 Dax’s memo

55:41 Dax’s skepticism of predictions

58:58 Engineering culture at OpenCode

1:02:38 How building works at OpenCode

1:05:36 Taste and quality

1:11:32 Dax’s work setup

1:12:35 The role of engineers and EMs

1:15:50 Advice for engineers

1:18:12 Book recommendation

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The Pragmatic Engineer deepdives relevant for this episode:

• How Claude Code is built

• How Codex is built

• Real-world engineering challenges: building Cursor

• The AI Engineering stack

• How Uber uses AI for development: inside look

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