When a flaky test can stall a merge queue, “just rerun CI” stops scaling fast.

Cory talks with Trunk co-founder and CEO Eli Schleifer about the outer loop problems that show up as teams ship more code - especially with AI-assisted development increasing PR volume. They break down what a merge queue is, why logical merge conflicts happen even when individual PRs are green, and how predictive testing helps protect main without forcing constant retesting.

Eli also explains how Trunk approaches flaky tests: collecting JUnit results, using quarantines so known flakes don’t block delivery, and fingerprinting failures to tell the difference between “this always times out” and “this was just broken by a recent change.” The conversation closes on how review and quality practices may shift as code generation accelerates - and what still needs strong guardrails like tests, security checks, and reliable CI signals.

Guest: Eli Schleifer, co-founder and CEO of Trunk

Eli Schleifer leads Trunk’s technical vision and product strategy, focused on closing the gap between AI-speed code generation and human-speed delivery by removing the bottlenecks that slow modern engineering teams. Trunk’s platform eliminates flaky tests, resolves merge queue constraints, and redesigns CI systems to enable high-throughput, continuous delivery.

Prior to founding Trunk, Eli was CTO at Directr, which was acquired by Google, and has served in engineering leadership roles at YouTube, Uber, and Microsoft.

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Trunk, website

Trunk, Slack

Trunk, Github

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Links to interesting things from this episode:

• Balsamiq
• “Code First Engineering” by Eli Schleifer