Jesse Vincent #

I'm thinking about what software development and business will look like in 2035, and building the agentic systems to get us there.

I'm the founder and CEO of Prime Radiant, an applied AI research lab, and the creator of Superpowers — the open-source agentic development methodology that plugs into the world's most widely used coding agents. As of April 2026 it has more than half a million installs and ranks among the fifty most-starred public repositories on GitHub.

I've spent the last thirty years building tools that help people do their best work: Request Tracker for tracking bugs (started in 1996 and still in production around the world); K-9 Mail for managing email on Android (acquired by Mozilla in 2022 and now shipping as Thunderbird for Android); Keyboardio for typing comfortably (co-founded with Kaia Dekker in 2012); and Perl 5 versions 5.12 and 5.14, which I shipped while serving as Perl 5 Project Lead between 2009 and 2011.

I write about this work at blog.fsck.com. Recent themes include Latent Space Engineering, the Rules and Gates framework for agent reliability, the case for Classical Software inside agentic systems, and a running thread on what it actually takes to ship software with coding agents.

Selected work #

• 2025 — Founded Prime Radiant — applied AI research lab.
• 2025 — Created Superpowers — open-source agentic development methodology. More than 500,000 installs; top-50 GitHub repository by stars.
• 2021 — Co-founded VaccinateCA and served as COO — We built the only free, comprehensive database of COVID vaccine availability for Californians and helped both the State of California and the Federal Government understand and validate their own vaccine rollouts.
• 2012 — Co-founded Keyboardio with Kaia Dekker — ergonomic mechanical keyboards. Kickstarter campaigns: Model 01, Model 100, Atreus, and Preonic.
• 2009–2011 — Served as Perl 5 Project Lead — Replaced an ad-hoc release cadence with monthly development releases and an annual stable cycle; the Perl community still ships on that schedule. Shipped Perl 5.12 and 5.14.
• 2008 — Created K-9 Mail — open-source Android email client. Mozilla took over the project in 2022 and shipped it as Thunderbird for Android in 2024.
• 2001 — Co-created Open Culture Foundation — 501(c)(3) working to get writers and musicians paid for work given away free on the internet.
• 2001 — Founded Best Practical — the company behind Request Tracker.
• 2000 — Co-authored RFC 2779 — IETF requirements specification for instant messaging and presence while working on Real Time Collaboration at Microsoft.
• 1998 — Graduated from Wesleyan University with a BA in Russian Studies.
• 1996 — Created Request Tracker — open-source issue tracker. In production around the world for three decades.

Talks and mentions #

Conference talks and interviews — the ones I've given — are collected on the talks page. Press, podcast appearances, and other coverage from elsewhere live on the mentions page.

Get in touch #

Drop me a line at jesse@primeradiant.com.