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Software How-To
**Python Bytes**

Python Bytes is a weekly podcast hosted by Michael Kennedy and Calvin Hendryx-Parker. The show is a short discussion on the headlines and noteworthy news in the Python, developer, and data science space.

Latest Episodes:

#487 Minimum requirements Jul 07, 2026

Show notes

Topics covered in this episode:

dust - a better du
Hermes Agent: The AI agent that grows with you
llm-coding-agent 0.1a0
Extras
Joke

Watch on YouTube

About the show

Sponsored by us! Support our work through:

Our courses at Talk Python
Consulting from Six Feet Up

Connect with the hosts

Michael: Mastodon / BlueSky / X / LinkedIn
Calvin: Mastodon / BlueSky / X / LinkedIn
Show: Mastodon / BlueSky / X

Join us on YouTube at pythonbytes.fm/live to be part of the audience. Usually Tuesday at 7am PT. Older video versions available there too.

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Michael #1: dust - a better du

du + Rust = dust - a fast, visual, intuitive disk-usage CLI
Run dust and immediately see the biggest directories and files without piping through sort, head, or awk
Smart recursive output focuses on what matters instead of dumping every folder
Colored bars show relative size and parent/child hierarchy, making “where did the space go?” obvious
Perfect for Python projects bloated by .venv, caches, Docker volumes, downloaded datasets, and local AI models
Install via brew, cargo install du-dust, conda-forge, Scoop, Snap, deb-get, or GitHub releases

Calvin #2: A Way better ARchive format for Python packaging

war - new archive format spec from Astral (same team as uv/ruff), v0.0.2, still no binary encoding defined yet
Header-Index-Store layout: header IDs the file, index maps names to store offsets, store holds compressed data
Index uses a finite-state transducer (FST) to dedupe common path prefixes across entry names
Supports three entry types (file, directory, link) and three compression modes (store/DEFLATE/zstd), plus an "executable" metadata flag
Unpacking is atomic - writes to a temp dir, then renames into place, so a failed extract never leaves a half-unpacked directory
Strict name-segment rules (no NUL/control chars, no leading/trailing whitespace, blocks Windows-reserved names like CON/PRN) to avoid path traversal and cross-platform footguns

Michael #3: Hermes Agent: The AI agent that grows with you

Hermes Agent is an open-source, Python-built AI agent framework from Nous Research - think ChatGPT-style assistant, but connected to your tools, files, shell, browser, calendar, memory, and messaging apps
I’m using it in Discord as a long-running agent conversation, not just a one-off chatbot session
Hermes can connect through a gateway to platforms like Discord, Telegram, Slack, WhatsApp, email, webhooks, and more - so the same assistant can follow you across surfaces
In my setup, I can send Hermes voice/text from Discord, keep project context across turns as threads, and ask it to actually do things: read GitHub repos, run commands, edit files, schedule calendar events, generate drafts, and verify results
A fun workflow: I can trigger one-shot actions from an Apple Watch shortcut - dictate a request, send it to Hermes, and have the agent execute it asynchronously
Hermes has persistent memory, so it can remember durable preferences and facts - for example, how I like my research formatted
It also has “skills,” which are reusable procedures the agent can load later, so Hermes can self-improve over time instead of rediscovering the same workflow repeatedly
It supports scheduled jobs / cron-style automations, so it can proactively watch for releases, send summaries, run checks, or remind you about things
It’s provider-agnostic: OpenRouter, Anthropic, Google, xAI, local models, Nous Portal, and others
The big idea: Hermes turns an LLM from “a chat box I visit” into “an agent I can reach from anywhere that knows my workflows and can take real actions and learns over time.”

Calvin #4: llm-coding-agent 0.1a0

Simon Willison built a Claude/Codex-style coding agent on top of his llm library, using an alpha of the llm package plus his python-lib-template-repo
Built almost entirely via prompted TDD - asked an agent to write a spec.md, then commit + implement with red/green tests, occasionally hitting a real OpenAI key to sanity-check
Shipped to PyPI as an alpha: uvx --prerelease=allow --with llm-coding-agent llm code
Tool set mirrors familiar coding-agent primitives: read_file, edit_file (exact string replace + diff), write_file, list_files, search_files, execute_command
Also exposes a Python API - CodingAgent(model="gpt-5.5", root=..., approve=True).run(...) - which Simon didn't ask for but got anyway
Demo: llm code --yolo told GPT-5.5 to build a SwiftUI CLI clock; model correctly noted SwiftUI isn't really CLI-friendly and still produced an ASCII-art time display

Extras

Calvin:

Slides, but for developers https://sli.dev/
Wanna reduce your token usage…. only issue is that its lossy https://github.com/teamchong/pxpipe
PEP 772 - Python Packaging Council inaugural election dates set, nominations open July 28, voting September 1-15

Michael:

What the pls? revisited!

Joke: Min requirements for Linux

#486 underscore-underscore-ghost-emoji Jun 30, 2026

Show notes

Topics covered in this episode:

Free-threaded Python: past, present, and future
django-admin-site-search
Qwen 3.6 27B is the sweet spot for local development
A large batch of PEPs are finalized
Extras
Joke

See the full show notes for this episode on the website at pythonbytes.fm/486

#485 Creating memories Jun 23, 2026

Show notes

Topics covered in this episode:

Backup Docker volumes locally or to any S3
Pyodide 314.0 Release
nb-cli: A Command-Line Interface for AI Agents and Notebook Automation
Hindsight Agent Memory That Learns
Extras
Joke

See the full show notes for this episode on the website at pythonbytes.fm/485

#484 All our tools Jun 16, 2026

Show notes

Topics covered in this episode:

pi + superpowers
Terminal: Warp.dev + OhMyZSH
{Blink,kitty} + mosh + tmux
Claude code
MacWhisper or Handy
Tailscale
Extras
Joke

See the full show notes for this episode on the website at pythonbytes.fm/484

#483 Thanks Brian Jun 09, 2026

Show notes

Topics covered in this episode:

Vulnerability and malware checks in uv
HTTP GET requests with the Python standard library
Millions of AI agents imperiled by critical vulnerability in open source package
alembic-git-revisions
Extras
Joke

See the full show notes for this episode on the website at pythonbytes.fm/483

#482 Mr. Beast's episode Jun 01, 2026

Show notes

Topics covered in this episode: