GOTO - The Brightest Minds in Tech
The GOTO podcast seeks out the brightest and boldest ideas from language creators and the world's leading experts in software development in the form of interviews and conference talks. Tune in to get the inspiration you need to bring in new technologies or gain extra evidence to support your software development plan.
GOTO - The Brightest Minds in Tech
Toad: Your AI Coding Agent Deserves a Better User Interface • Will McGugan & Olimpiu Pop
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This interview was recorded for GOTO Unscripted.
https://gotopia.tech
Will McGugan - Creator of Toad & the Python Packages, Rich, Textual & PyFilesystem
Olimpiu Pop - Technologist & Tech Journalist
ORIGINAL TALK TITLE
The Python Dev Who Built Rich, Textual & now Toad Just Redesigned How You Talk to AI
Check out more here:
https://gotopia.tech/articles/437
RESOURCES
Will
https://mastodon.social/@willmcgugan
https://x.com/willmcgugan
https://bsky.app/profile/willmcgugan.bsky.social
https://github.com/willmcgugan
https://www.linkedin.com/in/willmcgugan
https://willmcgugan.github.io
Olimpiu
https://x.com/olimpiupop
https://github.com/zroll
https://www.linkedin.com/in/olimpiupop
Links
https://www.textualize.io
https://www.batrachian.ai
https://github.com/textualize/rich
https://github.com/Textualize/textual
https://zed.dev
https://willmcgugan.github.io/toad-released
https://willmcgugan.github.io/announcing-toad
DESCRIPTION
In this GOTO Unscripted episode, Olimpiu Pop sits down with Will McGugan — Python PSF Fellow and creator of Rich (4+ billion downloads) and Textual — to demo his sabbatical project: Toad, a slick terminal-based universal frontend for AI coding agents.
Will's frustration was simple and justified: every major AI coding tool (Claude Code, Gemini, Codex) was built on top-tier models but wrapped in a UI that looked like it was designed in 2004. Toad fixes that by using the Agent Client Protocol (ACP) as a standardized plug-in layer, giving users elegant prompt editing, proper streaming markdown rendering, beautiful tables, syntax highlighting, and a hybrid shell-plus-AI interface — all in the terminal, where developers already live.
The conversation gets sharply honest when the topic turns to AI and developer craft. Will — a 30-year coding veteran who admits it's not instinctive for him to reach for AI — shares a clear-eyed view of its strengths and limits: AI is extraordinarily fast at anything well-defined and unambiguous, but still struggles with genuinely novel problems.
His conclusion?
Most of what software developers do day-to-day isn't actually novel — it's pattern assembly — and that's precisely where AI shines. The future of coding isn't replacement; it's liberation from the mechanical grind. Oh, and the podcast host literally reading out "music intro here" because stage directions ended up in the transcript? That one's a cautionary tale for the ages.
RECOMMENDED BOOKS
Will McGugan • Beginning Python Games Development 2nd ed. • https://amzn.to/4ebBfxu
Will McGugan • Beginning Game Development with Python and Pygame • https://amzn.to/4cyVdB3
Sam Keen • Clean Architecture with Python • https://amzn.to/4pBT5g0
Eric Evans • Domain-Driven Design • https://amzn.to/3tnGhwm
Naomi Ceder • The Quick Python Book • https://amzn.to/3zwdDOa
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