Skip to main content
How I AI

How I run autonomous coding agents from my phone with OpenAI Symphony + Linear | Alessio Fanelli (Kernel Labs)

35 min episode · 2 min read
·
Openai Symphony

Episode

35 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Productivity, Health & Wellness, Investing

AI-Generated Summary

Key Takeaways

  • Symphony + Linear as agent state machine: OpenAI's open-sourced Symphony framework monitors a Linear board, spins up Codex agents when issues move to "To Do," generates implementation workpads with acceptance criteria, then routes completed work to "Human Review" for PR comments. Moving an issue to "Rework" triggers a line-by-line correction checklist before auto-merging to "Done."
  • Cloud VPS over local runtime: Running coding agents on a cloud VPS (Alessio uses Zillow with 32GB RAM) rather than local machines enables true mobile management. Tasks persist, multiple agents run across four or five projects simultaneously, and you can intervene via Linear, GitHub PR comments, or direct shell access from any device without being physically present.
  • Token cost as a task health metric: Track token usage per task to diagnose agent inefficiency. Most routine tasks run 15,000–60,000 tokens; one Vercel deployment migration consumed 221 million tokens. When actual token spend far exceeds expectations, it signals a gap in tooling, task descriptions, or agent instructions that can be corrected before the next run.
  • Markdown spec files require active maintenance: Agent instruction files accumulate contradictory rules over time because models add lines rather than remove them. Audit and prune these files every few months. Keep specs prescriptive about architecture and commands but avoid over-specifying behavior, since overly detailed skill files cause agents to rigidly follow outdated instructions and create compounding errors.
  • Autonomous web agents for physical-world inventory arbitrage: Codex with browser access can scrape PSA certificate numbers from grading APIs, cross-reference eBay sold listings in batches of five, and flag underpriced cards in real time. The same pattern applies to any inventory business — vintage clothing, fish distribution, trade show card pricing — where heterogeneous data has historically blocked software automation.

What It Covers

Alessio Fanelli, founder of Kernel Labs, demonstrates how he runs autonomous coding agents using OpenAI Symphony integrated with Linear as a state machine, managing engineering tasks entirely from his phone, and applies the same agentic approach to automate Pokemon card pricing and inventory sourcing for his San Carlos trading card store.

Key Questions Answered

  • Symphony + Linear as agent state machine: OpenAI's open-sourced Symphony framework monitors a Linear board, spins up Codex agents when issues move to "To Do," generates implementation workpads with acceptance criteria, then routes completed work to "Human Review" for PR comments. Moving an issue to "Rework" triggers a line-by-line correction checklist before auto-merging to "Done."
  • Cloud VPS over local runtime: Running coding agents on a cloud VPS (Alessio uses Zillow with 32GB RAM) rather than local machines enables true mobile management. Tasks persist, multiple agents run across four or five projects simultaneously, and you can intervene via Linear, GitHub PR comments, or direct shell access from any device without being physically present.
  • Token cost as a task health metric: Track token usage per task to diagnose agent inefficiency. Most routine tasks run 15,000–60,000 tokens; one Vercel deployment migration consumed 221 million tokens. When actual token spend far exceeds expectations, it signals a gap in tooling, task descriptions, or agent instructions that can be corrected before the next run.
  • Markdown spec files require active maintenance: Agent instruction files accumulate contradictory rules over time because models add lines rather than remove them. Audit and prune these files every few months. Keep specs prescriptive about architecture and commands but avoid over-specifying behavior, since overly detailed skill files cause agents to rigidly follow outdated instructions and create compounding errors.
  • Autonomous web agents for physical-world inventory arbitrage: Codex with browser access can scrape PSA certificate numbers from grading APIs, cross-reference eBay sold listings in batches of five, and flag underpriced cards in real time. The same pattern applies to any inventory business — vintage clothing, fish distribution, trade show card pricing — where heterogeneous data has historically blocked software automation.

Notable Moment

Fanelli described his father's Rome-based fish delivery business, where staff still manually count frozen inventory with pen and paper each morning. He argued this exact workflow is now automatable with something as accessible as Meta smart glasses, illustrating AI's leverage at the smallest business scale.

Know someone who'd find this useful?

Episode Transcript

This is my favorite positive outcome of AI, which is small business creation. Just the ability to, like, intersect the human world in a way that has been historically very inefficient has been a quality of life improvement for me. You know, my dad, their business, they deliver fish to restaurants. They got, like, this freezer with the frozen stuff, and, like, somebody's going out there with, like, the pen and paper every morning kinda, like, writing down what's there. Sometimes they're like, oh my god. We're missing, like, three tuna. So, like, we're missing a box of shrimp. All of that work now can easily be automated even with just with the meta glasses. And you have another use case, which is the use case that my nine year old wants to see. So let's do our Pokemon card by AI use case. So I use codecs for two things. The first one is, like, getting the PSA certificates to keep track of a specific number for each crate. Then the next thing I'm working on is when you go to, like, all these trade shows, people are coming to you, they're selling you cars, and you gotta price them in real time. The whole process is super inefficient because people are, like, searching each car manually, like, on eBay or, like, TCG player and getting the number. You can actually use AI to save clock time for real people by doing these things autonomously. Welcome back to How I AI. I'm Claire Veau, product leader and AI obsessive, here on a mission to help you build better with these new tools. Today, I'm speaking with Alessio Fanelli, founder of Kernel Labs and cohost of the Leighton Space podcast. He's gonna show us how he uses OpenAI Symphony plus Linear to automate all his engineering tasks and how he has codex goal, shopping for very expensive Pokemon cards. Let's get to it. Quick word from today's sponsor, Firecrawl. If you're building with AI agents, you've probably hit the same wall. Your agent needs data from the web, but the right pages are difficult to find, buried in JavaScript, or blocked behind logins. Firecrawl is a web data API that lets agents search, scrape, and interact with the web at scale and get that clean, structured data they can actually use. Over a million developers, including myself, build on it. It's open source, and it's free to start. Stop fighting the web for data and start powering your AI agents and apps with Firecrawl at firecrawl.dev. Use code how I a I to get 10,000 free credits today. I'm excited about what you're gonna show us because I think we have heard a lot of people talk about orchestrating many agents autonomously across a project. We actually haven't seen many people do it. I still see a lot of prompting. Even if you're prompting into a loop or a goal or something that spawns sub agents, people are really really …

Get the full transcript (6,828 words) + summary by email — free

One-time email with the complete transcript and AI summary of this episode. No account needed.

One email, no spam. We’ll also show you what SignalCast does.

Browse all How I AI transcripts →

You just read a 3-minute summary of a 32-minute episode.

Get How I AI summarized like this every Monday — plus up to 2 more podcasts, free.

Pick Your Podcasts — Free

Keep Reading

Books, tools, and gear mentioned in this episode

SignalCast may earn commission on purchases via these links. As an Amazon Associate, SignalCast earns from qualifying purchases.

Tools

  • by Atlassian

    Sponsors: Jira Product Discovery
  • by OpenAI

    OpenAI's open-sourced Symphony framework monitors a Linear board, spins up Codex agents when issues move to 'To Do,' generates implementation workpads with acceptance criteria, then routes completed work to 'Human Review' for PR comments.
  • Symphony + Linear as agent state machine: OpenAI's open-sourced Symphony framework monitors a Linear board, spins up Codex agents when issues move to 'To Do.'
  • by OpenAI

    Codex with browser access can scrape PSA certificate numbers from grading APIs, cross-reference eBay sold listings in batches of five, and flag underpriced cards in real time.
  • You can intervene via Linear, GitHub PR comments, or direct shell access from any device without being physically present.
  • One Vercel deployment migration consumed 221 million tokens.
  • Codex with browser access can scrape PSA certificate numbers from grading APIs, cross-reference eBay sold listings in batches of five, and flag underpriced cards in real time.
  • Sponsors: Firecrawl

Gear

  • by Meta

    He argued this exact workflow is now automatable with something as accessible as Meta smart glasses, illustrating AI's leverage at the smallest business scale.

More from How I AI

We summarize every new episode. Want them in your inbox?

Similar Episodes

Related episodes from other podcasts

Explore Related Topics

This podcast is featured in Best AI Podcasts (2026) — ranked and reviewed with AI summaries.

Read this week's Health & Longevity Podcast Insights — cross-podcast analysis updated weekly.

You're clearly into How I AI.

Every Monday, we deliver AI summaries of the latest episodes from How I AI and 192+ other podcasts. Free for one show.

Start My Monday Digest

No credit card · Unsubscribe anytime