Build an environment aware AI Agent from Scratch

John Berryman is the founder of Arcturus Labs. His journey through AI and search technologies includes contributing to GitHub Copilot's early development, where he worked on the team that brought AI-assisted coding from concept to reality. Throughout his career, John has helped build search and recommendation systems that millions use daily – from GitHub's code search infrastructure to Eventbrite's discovery platform and the US Patent Office's next-generation search system. This blend of experience in both foundational search technologies and cutting-edge AI applications gives him unique insight into building practical, powerful LLM applications.

John shares his expertise through two books: Relevant Search, which reveals the art and science of building search applications, and Prompt Engine, which guides developers through the emerging practice of language model applicatio

I co-founded SpecStory and have built our products (open source extensions and Stoa) entirely by steering agents with almost no hand-written code.

I wrote about it extensively: the Beyond Code-Centric whitepaper, Goal Engineering, and 25 Patterns in Agentic Engineering book.

Before this I was Chief Product Officer at Pluralsight and led data teams at GitHub, Dropbox, and Google. I'm passionate about teaching what it takes to actually ship with agents: the process, mindset and actual techniques that work.