Most AI coding tools are benchmarked on capability. But capability doesn't predict adoption. At Kilo Code, we've processed over 25 trillion tokens across 1.5M+ developers, giving us one of the clearest real-world datasets on how engineering teams actually integrate AI into their workflows. This talk breaks down the adoption ladder we've observed (autocomplete → chat → single agents → orchestration), where developers stall out, and the three technical failure points that consistently kill trust before agents ever get a real chance: context construction, model routing, and feedback loops. I'll walk through what the data shows about how context windows need to scale at each rung, why no single model wins across task types, and how trust itself becomes a measurable signal you can design around. If you're building AI-powered dev tools or trying to roll out agents across an engineering org, this is the stuff benchmarks won't tell you.
Speaker
Brendan O’Leary
Founding Developer Relations Engineer @Kilo Code, 15+ Years in Software,
Brendan O’Leary has spent 15+ years in software, mostly at the intersection of developer tools, open source, and go-to-market.
Currently, he’s the Founding Developer Relations Engineer at Kilo Code, the most popular open source AI coding agent. Before that, he was VP of Developer Relations at Prefect, and before that he led Product Strategy and Community at ProjectDiscovery through their Series A.
At GitLab, Brendan was there from Series C through IPO. He started in Professional Services, moved into Product Management owning CI/CD (Verify), and ended up as a Staff Developer Evangelist. He helped build the developer program, ran the community strategy, and contributed to the growth story that took GitLab public.
He served on the CNCF Governing Board from 2020-2022, including a seat on the Compensation Committee. That gave him a front-row view of how open source governance actually works at scale.
Brendan’s approach to DevRel: it's developer marketing. Developer adoption is the primary KPI. Everything he does—code, content, community—ladders up to that. He writes technical content, ships demos, speaks at conferences, and builds the systems that turn individual developers into advocates.
Earlier in Brendan’s career, he led release management and DevOps adoption at Orbis Technologies supporting SOCOM and Fortune 100 clients. That background taught him how to ship software when the stakes are real and the timelines don't move.
