Battle of the Bots: AI Agent Showdown

AI engineering leaders Calvin Hendryx-Parker (Six Feet Up CTO) and Travis Frisinger (8th Light Technical Director of AI) will take you through a head-to-head battle of these tools in real-time.

We tackle common developer tasks like:

• Refactoring full-stack applications
• Navigating complex projects
• Managing git workflows

All inside real-world environments complete with Docker, VS Code, and Kubernetes in the mix.

This isn’t a slide deck. It’s a working session — with friendly banter and strong opinions.

Calvin and Travis alternate demos, grill each other on tool performance, and break down what it actually takes to get value out of these agents in day-to-day dev work.

You'll learn how to:

• Configure tools to navigate real-world dev environments
• Evaluate refactor success through commit patterns and project conventions
• Identify which assistants support engineering standards — and which require constant oversight
• Build a playbook for evaluating AI assistants by code quality, cost efficiency, and agentic power

Perfect for engineering leaders and curious developers alike, this session skips the fluff and dives deep into what’s real, what’s ready — and what still needs babysitting.

Brought to you by Six Feet Up and 8th Light.