E193: Managing 100s of Agents with Maestro

E193: Managing 100s of Agents with Maestro

Author: Robby (MTF); Tim (Essence VC) April 9, 2026 Duration: 39:12

In our latest Open Source Startup Podcast episode, co-hosts Robby and Tim talk with Pedram Amini, the creator of open source platform Maestro which allows users to run fleets of AI coding agents autonomously for long periods of time. Their project has 3K stars on GitHub.

The episode explores how Maestro's multi-agent system overcame a key limitation in generative AI: context overload. After juggling many Claude sessions for different tasks, Pedram realized each problem needed its own isolated workflow. Maestro turns this into a system letting users run many agents and tabs in parallel, keeping tasks separate and avoiding context degradation during long or complex work.

Maestro is designed for scale, enabling dozens or even hundreds of agents to handle complex projects simultaneously. It’s flexible, model-agnostic, and especially useful for breaking big problems into independent units. The project has quickly grown into a community-driven effort, reflecting a broader shift: instead of buying a bunch of tools, developers can build highly customized AI systems themselves, pointing toward a future of large-scale agent orchestration.


Building a company around open source software is a unique and often misunderstood path, full of specific challenges and rare opportunities. The Open Source Startup Podcast digs into that journey directly with the people who have navigated it, moving beyond theory to the practical realities shared in conversation. Hosts Robby and Tim bring their distinct perspectives from MTF and Essence VC to these discussions, creating a space where founders speak candidly. You’ll hear from the architects behind names like HashiCorp, MongoDB, and Vercel, as well as leaders from Chronosphere, DBT, and mobile.dev, as they unpack their experiences. This podcast focuses on the pivotal decisions around community building, monetization strategies, and maintaining project ethos under the pressures of scaling a business. Each episode serves as a detailed case study, revealing how these companies turned publicly available code into sustainable, impactful enterprises. The dialogue naturally explores the tensions between open collaboration and commercial needs, offering a real-world blueprint that is both instructive and nuanced. For anyone curious about the intersection of community-driven development and venture-scale growth, this series provides an essential and unfiltered resource.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Open Source Startup Podcast
Podcast Episodes
E172: How MetalBear Makes Cloud Development 100x Faster [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 35:22
Aviram Hassan is Co-Founder & CEO of MetalBear, the cloud development platform that lets developers run local code as if it were part of their remote environment. Their project, mirrord, has 4K stars on GitHub and is lov…
E171: How Companies Like Block Build Viral Open Source Projects [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 40:08
Manik Surtani is Head of Open Source and Bradley Axen is Principal Engineer at Block. Manik was key to launching Block's Open Source Programs Office and Bradley is a major open source contributor - including the project…
E170: From Idea to Working Web App Using Only Python with Reflex [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 39:19
Nikhil Rao is Co-Founder of Reflex, the open source framework to build and deploy web apps in python. Their project, also called reflex, has over 22K stars on GitHub and is a library to build full-stack web apps.Reflex h…
E168: One (Multi-Model) Database to Rule Them All - SurrealDB [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 39:36
Tobie Morgan Hitchcock is the Co-Founder & CEO of SurrealDB, the next generation serverless cloud database for modern applications. Their open source database, also called surrealdb, has 30K stars on GitHub. SurrealDB ha…
E166: Making Open Source Reliable & Secure with Fossa [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 40:06
Kevin Wang is Founder & CEO of Fossa, the product security platform that automates compliance & security across open source third party code, suppliers, and tools. In this episode, we discuss: Where Kevin's interest in o…
E165: Can DevTools Get to $1B ARR? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 42:52
Max Stoiber is Co-Founder & CEO of Stellate, the GraphQL edge platformrecently acquired by Shopify.In this episode, we discuss:The Stellate journey from idea to initial traction to acquisitionThe market size (and limitat…
E164: Taking on Auth0 with Open Source Zitadel [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 34:02
Florian Forster is Co-Founder & CEO of Zitadel, the cloud security platform aiming to build the future of identity and access management. Their open source project, also called zitadel, provides identity infrastructure a…
E163: Using Feedback Loops to Optimize LLM-Based Applications [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 38:12
Viraj Mehta is the Co-Founder & CTO of TensorZero which is an open-source infrastructure platform that creates a feedback loop for optimizing LLM applications. Their open source project helps users turn production data i…