In this year-in-review episode of The GitHub Podcast, Cassidy and Abby are joined by Helen Hou-Sandí, GitHub’s engineering manager for the Accessibility Engineering team and lead developer in the WordPress project.

They dig into Maintainer Tiny Wins, a series of two week long timeboxed improvements that save millions of developer minutes a day, from smarter PR reviewers panels and one-click merge conflict resolution to long-awaited WebP support. Helen shares how accessibility issues often spark broader UX improvements, and why fixing “just” a border color can evolve into deeply impactful changes at GitHub’s scale. They also explore the rise of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) as an open standard, GitHub’s new open source accessibility scanner action, supporting non-code contributors and AI as the “over-eager new contributor.

Whether you’re a maintainer, a contributor, or just love a good Furby-powered keynote, this episode is a love letter to the tiny details that make open source better for everyone.

Links mentioned in the episode:

GitHub Accessibility Scanner Action

Project Bluefin

GitHub Universe 2025 – Day Two Keynote

Unlocking the Power of MCP

2025 Octoverse Report

Refined GitHub Browser Extension

Git History Cleaner

Open Source Accessibility Summit

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In this episode guest host Greg Cochran from the GitHub Secure Open Source Fund brings together four maintainers who are helping secure the open source projects we all depend on: Christian (Log4j/Log4Shell), Carlos (GoReleaser), Michael (EVCC), and Camila (ScanAPI) to unpack what it really looks like to level up security in critical OSS.

They share how the Fund’s three-week security sprint, ongoing check-ins, and tight-knit community helped them move from “we don’t know what we don’t know” to concrete wins: hardened GitHub Actions pipelines, incident response plans, better reporting processes, and SBOMs that actually include dependency licenses. They also talk candidly about asking “dumb” questions in a trusted space and the ripple effect when one project’s security posture improves across its dependents. Finally, the group dives into AI security: using fuzzing, GitHub Copilot, and tools like the Secure Code Game both to find vulnerabilities faster and to keep up with attackers who now have AI on their side too.

Links mentioned in the episode: 

GitHub Secure Open Source Fund overview

Announcing GitHub Secure Open Source Fund

Inside the breach that broke the internet: The untold story of Log4Shell

Log4j / Log4Shell video (castle interview with Christian)

EVCC – open source EV charging & energy management 

GoReleaser – release engineering automation

ScanAPI – automated API testing & live documentation

GitHub Security Lab

Secure Code Game (GitHub Security Lab)

GitHub Copilot – AI coding assistant

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Abby sits down with Angie Jones, VP of Engineering at Block, live at GitHub Universe to talk about Goose, Block’s open source AI agent and reference implementation of the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Angie shares how Goose went from an internal tool to an open source project that lets the community drive features like multimodel support, and how Block’s 12,000 employees across 15+ job functions (not just engineers) now use agents every day. They dig into practical, non-hype uses of AI agents: detecting when students are struggling, triaging open source issues, segmenting 80k+ sales leads, and even letting a salesperson “vibe code” a feature on the train. Angie also talks about trust and control when giving AI access to codebases, why developers are tired of flashy demos, and how her new AI Builder Fellowship is designed to support the next generation of native AI builders. 

Links mentioned in the episode: 

https://angiejones.tech

https://github.com/block/goose

https://github.com/block

https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol

https://github.com/features/copilot

https://testautomationu.applitools.com

https://www.selenium.dev

https://playwright.dev

https://www.cypress.io

https://code.visualstudio.com

https://www.salesforce.com

https://github.com/martinwoodward/pyfluff

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In this episode, recorded live at GitHub Universe 2025, Andrea sits down with Frank “Frenck” Nijhof, a GitHub Star and project lead for Home Assistant, one of the most active open source projects on the platform. They unpack how millions of households run privacy-first automations locally (no cloud required), why the Open Home Foundation exists to prevent vendor lock-in and e-waste, and how this famously welcoming community scaled to 21k+ contributors. Frank also shares insights about the development of “Assist,” an open, local-first voice assistant (with optional AI), as well as the new “Home Assist Green” hardware device, plus practical ways non-coders can meaningfully contribute to the project, too.

Links mentioned in the episode:

https://github.com/frenck

https://www.home-assistant.io

https://www.home-assistant.io/green

https://www.home-assistant.io/voice

https://www.home-assistant.io/assist

https://www.esphome.io

https://github.com/home-assistant

https://www.raspberrypi.com

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Andrea and Kedasha sit down with data whisperer Jeff Luszcz, one of the wizards behind GitHub’s annual Octoverse report, to unpack this year’s biggest shifts. They get into why TypeScript overtook Python on GitHub, how AI-assisted “vibe coding” and agentic workflows are reshaping everyday engineering, and what it means that more than one new developer joins GitHub every second. From 1.12B open source contributions and 518M merged PRs to COBOL’s unexpected comeback, global growth (hello India, Brazil and Indonesia), and “security by default” with CodeQL and Dependabot, this episode turns the numbers into next steps for your career and your open source projects.

Links mentioned in the episode:

https://octoverse.github.com

https://github.com/jeffrey-luszcz

https://github.com/features/copilot

https://codeql.github.com

https://docs.github.com/code-security/dependabot

https://docs.github.com/code-security/secret-scanning/introduction/about-secret-scanning

https://www.typescriptlang.org

https://www.python.org

https://nextjs.org

https://vitejs.dev

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=GitHub.copilot

https://www.home-assistant.io

https://code.visualstudio.com

https://github.com/explore

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In this episode of the GitHub Podcast, Abby sits down with Felix Reda, Director of Developer Policy at GitHub, and Christian Grobmeier, a longtime Log4J maintainer, to reflect on the aftermath of the Log4Shell vulnerability and how it reshaped open source funding. They discuss the creation of Germany’s Sovereign Tech Fund, the challenges and opportunities funding brings to open source projects, and what it takes to build sustainable and resilient developer communities. The conversation highlights the major lessons learned from these events, from managing resources and community health to navigating government and industry support. Read more about Log4Shell and watch the full story over on the GitHub blog.

Links mentioned in the episode:

https://sovereigntechfund.de/

https://okfn.de/

https://prototypefund.de/

https://www.opentech.fund/

https://nlnet.nl/

https://github.blog/2022-05-09-introducing-the-github-secure-open-source-fund/

https://dripapp.org/

https://ghost.org/

https://ttcmap.ca/

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Homebrew’s project lead Mike McQuaid joins Abby and Andrea to unpack what it really takes to sustain one of the most-used developer tools on macOS and Linux. From early GitHub workflows to today’s automation and guardrails, Mike details the soft-power leadership that keeps volunteers motivated, and shares insights on how to scale contributions, keep a small maintainer team effective, and triage with empathy (and boundaries). This episode covers governance, “saying no,” using AI responsibly, and how IRL feedback at Universe turned into performance wins.

Links mentioned in the episode:

https://brew.sh

https://www.macports.org

https://fosdem.org

https://githubuniverse.com

https://mikemcquaid.com

https://github.com/TheoPFR/somo

github.com/github/spec-kit

https://flukeout.github.io/

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In this episode of the GitHub Podcast, Abby and Kedasha are joined by Keeley Hammond, a longtime maintainer of the Electron project. They explore the inner workings of one of the most widely used open source desktop frameworks, dive into how Electron empowers developers to build cross-platform desktop apps with web technologies, and discuss what it takes to build a welcoming and sustainable open source community at scale. The conversation touches on contributor culture, project governance, automation tools, and the role of AI in open source, in both its promise and its challenges.

Links mentioned in the episode:

https://github.com/electron/electron

https://github.com/electron/forge

https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/

https://openjsf.org/

https://github.com/vert-d

https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025/

https://github.com/electron/governance

https://github.com/electron/electron/issues

https://github.com/unjs/issue-triage

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In this episode of the GitHub Podcast, Cassidy and Kedasha explore the rise of personal software tools built by developers for themselves, and shared with the world through open source. From command line apps to browser extensions, they dive into how small, purpose-built projects can have a big impact, reflecting on how AI is making development more accessible, while celebrating the joy of creative problem-solving, and spotlighting standout repos from within the GitHub community.

Links mentioned in the episode:

https://www.raycast.com/

https://espanso.org/

https://astro.build/

https://github.com/features/copilot

https://github.com/explore

The GitHub Podcast is hosted by Abigail Cabunoc Mayes, Kedasha Kerr and Cassidy Williams. The show is edited, mixed and produced by Victoria Marin. Thank you to our production partner, editaudio.

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In this episode of the GitHub Podcast, Cassidy, Abby, and Andrea are joined by developer advocate, educator, and creator of CodeTV, Jason Lengstorf. They uncover Jason’s journey through open source, from live coding streams to building engaging, educational content for developers, touching on the evolution of JavaScript, the rise of AI tools and MCP, and how open source continues to empower creators and communities along the way. Finally, the team spotlights their favorite open source projects and discusses why fun, accessibility, and collaboration are essential to developer learning today.

Links mentioned in the episode:

https://www.learnwithjason.dev

https://github.com/colinhacks/zod

https://github.com/jherr

https://github.com/sdras

https://github.com/svg/svgo

https://github.com/pearcleaner/pearcleaner

https://cobalt.tools

https://github.com/philosowaffle/Peloton-to-Garmin

https://graphql.org

https://nextjs.org

https://tailwindcss.com

This episode of The GitHub Podcast is hosted by Abigail Cabunoc Mayes, Andrea Griffiths, and Cassidy Williams. The show is edited, mixed and produced by Victoria Marin. Thank you to our production partner, editaudio.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.