Agents in the database (Interview)

The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source

Ajay Kulkarni from Tiger Data (Co-founder/CEO) is on the pod this week with Adam. He asked him to get vulnerable and trace his path to becoming a CEO. They dig into the themes that have shaped his career, and explore how founder values end up forming company culture (whether you intend them to or not). From his enterprise days to building Timescale (and the rename to Tiger Data), we cover the whole journey — even the haters, because haters gonna hate. Here’s where it gets really interesting: Agents in the database! Not the hype. The real thing baby. They get into how fast you can go from idea to shipped these days, what it actually means to talk to your database, and the whole API/CLI/MCP/Skills movement.

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Sponsors:

• Depot – 10x faster builds? Yes please. Build faster. Waste less time. Accelerate Docker image builds, and GitHub Actions workflows. Easily integrate with your existing CI provider and dev workflows to save hours of build time.
• Augment Code – Adam loves “Auggie” – Augment Code’s CLI that brings Augment’s context engine and powerful AI reasoning anywhere your code goes. From building alongside you in the terminal to any part of your development workflow.
• Framer – Design and publish in one place. Get started free at framer.com/design, code CHANGELOG for a free month of Pro. Rules and restrictions may apply.

Featuring:

• Ajay Kulkarni – GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

• Agentic Postgres
• timescale/tiger-cli

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Chapter

1. This week on The Changelog (00:00:00)

2. Sponsor: Depot (00:01:11)

https://depot.dev

3. Welcome Ajay Kulkarni (00:04:01)

4. Let's get vurnerable (00:04:34)

5. Getting to CEO (00:06:13)

6. This was 2004 (for Adam) (00:07:43)

7. Themes in Ajay's career (00:10:54)

8. How did you get here? (00:16:21)

9. Conversational overlapping (00:18:06)

10. Founder values form company culture (00:19:43)

11. From enterprise to here (00:23:30)

12. Postgres-native AND open source (00:25:40)

13. Sponsor: Augment Code (00:30:57)

https://www.augmentcode.com/product/CLI

14. From Timescale to Tiger Data (00:33:57)

15. Haters hate (00:38:33)

16. Agents in the database (00:42:33)

17. It's the REAL THING baby (00:48:49)

18. Speed of idea to shipped?! (00:53:33)

19. Sponsor: Framer (01:00:04)

https://www.framer.com/design/

20. Agent Tools (01:01:43)

21. Now I can talk to the database (01:06:06)

22. API/CLI/MCP/Skills (01:09:15)

23. Build Skills not Agents (01:12:59)

24. How will the terminal evolve? (01:14:44)

25. What's on the horizon? (01:17:53)

26. Thanks Ajay! (01:20:11)

27. Closing thoughts and stuff (01:20:22)