From open source hits to OpenAI

This week I’m talking with Max Stoiber, currently working on ChatGPT’s plugin directory and app platform at OpenAI. We discuss the hundreds of open source projects nobody remembers alongside the big ones like react-boilerplate and styled-components, how Spectrum became part of GitHub and eventually helped shape GitHub Discussions, the founder growth that came from building Stellate, the GraphQL cache that turned into a dual acquisition by Shopify and The Guild, and why ChatGPT apps feel like a new surface for software.

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Featuring:

Max Stoiber – Website, GitHub, X

Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

Featured

Max Stoiber

Max Stoiber on GitHub

OpenAI

ChatGPT

Developers can now submit apps to ChatGPT

ChatGPT Developer mode

OpenAI Apps SDK examples

OpenAI Apps SDK UI

Model Context Protocol

Max’s open source and community path

styled-components

styled-components on GitHub

react-boilerplate

Max’s open source projects

Spec.fm

GitHub acquires Spectrum

GitHub Discussions

Slack

Circle

GraphQL and Stellate

Stellate

Announcing Stellate, the CDN for GraphQL APIs

GraphCDN is now Stellate and we’ve raised $30M

The Guild acquires Stellate

GraphQL

GraphQL Hive

GraphQL Yoga

GraphiQL

Firebase

Vercel

RethinkDB

Apollo Client

urql

DataLoader

Shopify and storefronts

Shopify

Shopify Liquid reference

Shopify themes

Horizon: 10 new free themes by Shopify

Horizon documentation

Shopify Agentic Storefronts

ChatGPT apps and MCP

Building MCP servers for ChatGPT and API integrations

Build with the Apps SDK

Apps in ChatGPT

MCP Apps overview

Zillow

Expedia

Leadership and founder references

COIN feedback framework

Gatsby

GitHub

The Guild

Shopify Engineering

Tools, platforms, and companies mentioned

Node.js

TypeScript

Bun

Zed

Ghostty

Fly.io

DX

Incident.io

Clerk

Raycast

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!