AG GridBryntum

Beyond the Prompt

A one-day conference on building applications that hold up in production — hosted by AG Grid and Bryntum.

  • Tuesday 19 May 2026
  • IET London, 2 Savoy Place
  • Early bird £149

Getting to a prototype with AI is easy. Production is not.

Beyond the Prompt is built around a simple observation: getting to a working prototype with AI is easy. But when real data arrives, everything changes. Performance degrades, edge cases multiply, and the application you built is not the one you need. That is the point where AI helps less, and where the real engineering begins.

The day brings together engineers and experts to talk honestly about what it takes to build applications that hold up in production — with time to connect with our teams over lunch, coffee, and drinks.

At a glance

When

Tuesday 19 May 2026

Doors open 08:30
Sessions 09:30 - 16:45
Networking 17:00 - 20:00

Where

IET London

2 Savoy Place,
London
WC2R 0BL

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Tickets

Early bird £149

Includes refreshments, lunch, and entry to the networking reception.

Book Now

Speakers

Engineers and experts from AG Grid, Bryntum, and beyond — talking about what it takes to build applications that hold up in production.

Matt Webb

Matt Webb

Co-founder, Inanimate

Matt is co-founder of Inanimate, consumer hardware bringing agents into the real world. Previously he has consulted with Google's AI research group, run startup accelerators with R/GA Ventures, and was CEO and co-founder of the design studio BERG which invented some of the world’s first internet-connected consumer products like Little Printer (and has work in the New York MoMA). He is co-author of Mind Hacks (O’Reilly, 2004). Since 2000 Matt has blogged at interconnected.org. He writes weekly+ on computing, design, and speculative futures. He lives in London.

Stephen Cooper

Stephen Cooper

Team Lead, AG Grid

Stephen is the Team Lead for AG Grid and loves sharing practical, experience-based tips, tricks, and case studies from years in the codebase. He's gone deep into grid performance and framework integrations, and has spent more time than he'd like profiling render cycles. Outside of work, life revolves around family, four kids and two dogs, and he's happiest when the whole crew is out together exploring in the park.

Maggie Appleton

Maggie Appleton

Staff Research Engineer, GitHub

Maggie is a Staff Research Engineer at GitHub, where she works on tools for thinking, writing, and building with code. With a background in anthropology, she’s known for her visual essays that explore how developers understand systems, languages, and ideas. She’s a strong advocate for “digital gardens” over traditional publishing, and spends her time mapping out how knowledge grows on the web. Outside of work, she’s usually sketching concepts, writing, or connecting dots between code and culture.

Sophie Koonin

Sophie Koonin

Web Discipline Lead, Monzo

Sophie leads a team within the Operations collective at Monzo, building the software that powers the bank's award-winning customer experience. She's also Monzo's Web Discipline Lead, advocating for web and empowering others to lead web platform improvements throughout the company. Outside of work, Sophie loves arranging pop songs for her choir Mixtape, playing video games, cooking, and gardening.

David Khourshid

David Khourshid

Founder, Stately.ai

David is the founder of Stately.ai and creator of XState, the most popular open-source state machine & statecharts library. He's a longtime advocate for event-driven modeling and visual diagramming as the foundation for reliable UIs and, increasingly, AI agents. When he's not at a computer keyboard, he's at a piano keyboard.

Mats Bryntse

Mats Bryntse

Founder & CEO, Bryntum

Mats is the founder and CEO of Bryntum, where he and his team build advanced scheduling and project planning tools for modern web apps. For the past 15 years, he has obsessed over JavaScript performance, developer experience, and making complex UIs feel simple. He used to enjoy chess, badminton, and independent thought, until Claude entered his life and optimized those away.

Steve Ruiz

Steve Ruiz

CEO, tldraw

A developer, designer, and now startup founder in London. With a background in visual art, Steve works primarily in creative tools for the web. He is known for tldraw, and demos of perfect arrows.

Matt Pocock

Matt Pocock

Senior Developer Educator, AI Hero

Matt is a senior developer educator at AI Hero, a TypeScript author, and an educator passionate about bringing real software engineering rigour to the age of AI. He co-organizes the AI Coding for Real Engineers cohort, a community for experienced developers who want to build with AI tools without throwing away everything they already know. Outside of the keyboard, Matt enjoys long runs through the Oxfordshire countryside, loudly supporting Arsenal, and experimenting with new ways to make complex ideas click for developers everywhere.

Bernie Sumption

Bernie Sumption

Engineer, AG Grid

Bernie is an engineer at AG Grid specialising in theming. "The other engineers make it work fast and well, I make it look pretty" he likes to say. Outside work he goes hiking, plays with his kids, and once made a tweeting cat flap that has 10x more social media followers than he does.

Josh Hobson

Josh Hobson

Developer, AG Grid

Josh is a developer at AG Grid, where he's been building AG Studio — a new dashboard library with multi-agent AI baked in. He's a mathematician by training and a maker by instinct, with a particular love for developer tooling, type systems, and intelligent interfaces. Outside of work, Josh can be found tinkering with 3D printers, ski touring in the Alps, or out on long walks with his dog.

Adam Wang

Adam Wang

AG Studio Product Lead, AG Grid

Adam is the AG Studio Product Lead at AG Grid, with around 10 years of experience in product management across various disciplines. He previously worked on AG Grid Integrated Charts before focusing on AG Studio. He enjoys the creative process of product management and is keen to solve problems by truly understanding user needs. Outside of work, he's a spin instructor who loves to put together a fire playlist. He also collects coloured vinyl.

Patrick Rau

Patrick Rau

Senior Developer, TCS

Patrick builds and maintains core parts of Team Centric Software's fleetplan platform, specializing in UI integration and complex components like AG Grid, Bryntum's Scheduler Pro, and modules for audit tracking and safety reporting. He's driven by a passion for creating software that makes a real difference for the people who use it. When he's not solving problems at work, you'll find him exploring new technologies through personal projects, gaming, or planning his next trip.

Johan Isaksson

Johan Isaksson

Head of Engineering, Bryntum

Johan is responsible for architecture, gate keeping, performance and styling across all Bryntum products. When not checking pull requests, recording performance profiles or tweaking CSS he enjoys watching hockey and playing floorball.

John Masterson

John Masterson

CEO, AG Grid

John is the CEO of AG Grid, which he first joined in 2016 as employee number two. After a detour as CTO of a London health-tech startup, he returned in 2020 and stepped into the CEO role in 2024. He's spent fifteen years building software and leading engineering teams, and is determined to keep AG Grid the first choice for JavaScript developers. Outside of work, John can be found on his bike, in his headphones listening to a podcast, or picking up a guitar.

Phil Hawksworth

Phil Hawksworth

Event MC

With a passion for browser technologies, and the empowering properties of the web, Phil loves seeking out ingenuity and simplicity, especially in places where over-engineering is common. After 25 years of building web applications for companies such as Google, Apple, Nike, R/GA, and The London Stock Exchange, he has worked to challenge traditional technical architectures in favour of simplicity and effectiveness, working in Developer Experience at Netlify and Deno.

More speakers to be announced soon...

Full schedule

A single track across the day, with breaks designed for conversation. Some sessions are still being finalised and speakers may be added.

Morning

  1. 08:30 – 09:30

    Registration and coffee

  2. 09:30 – 09:40

    Welcome

    Opening remarks to set the theme for the day: building with tools you can trust.

  3. 09:40 – 10:10

    Opening Keynote

    John Masterson (CEO, AG Grid) & Mats Bryntse (Founder & CEO, Bryntum)

  4. 10:10 – 10:40

    Goodbye slop; welcome determinism

    David Khourshid

    Vibe coding feels productive until you have to maintain it. Behind the agent "thinking..." you ignore and the code you never opened lies a growing pile of wasted tokens, nondeterministic behavior, and compounding errors hiding in plain sight. This talk pushes back on the status quo: elaborate agent architectures, "prompting astrology", overnight automation loops burning through context windows and credit cards. Come for the critique, leave with a framework for using AI to build software you actually understand.

  5. 10:40 – 11:10

    Coffee break

  6. 11:10 – 11:35

    Codebase design for the agent era

    Stephen Cooper (Team Lead, AG Grid)

    As AI agents become part of the development workflow, codebase structure and well-designed system prompts matter more than ever. This session will show you how we're approaching this in the AG Grid and AG Charts codebases..

  7. 11:35 – 12:00

    AI in AG Studio

    Josh Hobson (Developer, AG Grid)

    How do you build a dashboard you can't see? A behind-the-scenes look at AG Studio's multi-agent architecture and the client-side tools that let any LLM build reports it otherwise couldn't.

  8. 12:00 – 12:25

    Bringing AI to the Canvas

    Steve Ruiz (CEO, tldraw)

    At tldraw, we've been bringing agents to our infinite canvas. In December 2025, we ran a one-month experiment named Fairydraw where users could work with three fairies - virtual collaborators who work with you, with your human collaborators, and coordinate together on large tasks.

  9. 12:25 – 13:35

    Lunch and product demos

Afternoon

  1. 13:35 – 14:05

    Debugging CSS performance with AI

    Bernie Sumption (Developer, AG Grid)

    CSS performance issues can be subtle and time-consuming. This talk will show you how you can guide AI to uncover bugs without needing to learn the intricacies of CSS rendering internals.

  2. 14:05 – 14:20

    Software that moves fleets: Lessons from AG Grid, Bryntum, and Beyond

    Patrick Rau (Developer, TCS)

    In aviation, the software has to be rock solid. Patrick pulls back the curtain on the components powering Fleetplan's UI, including AG Grid, Bryntum's Scheduler Pro, and the modules behind audit tracking and safety reporting that keep operations airtight.

  3. 14:20 – 14:50

    Product Roadmap

    Johan Isaksson (Head of Engineering, Bryntum) & Adam Wang (AG Studio Product Lead, AG Grid)

    A detailed look at our upcoming roadmap, covering AG Grid and Bryntum's suite of tools.

  4. 14:50 – 15:20

    Coffee break

  5. 15:20 – 15:45

    One-click agentic SDLC

    Mats Bryntse (Founder & CEO, Bryntum)

    A demo of a headless Claude workflow, built by Bryntum CEO Mats, that turns GitHub issues into mergeable PRs, with agents doing the work, and a custom Kanban UI keeping things in check.

  6. 15:45 – 16:30

    How agentic AI Is reshaping software engineering

    Maggie Appleton (Staff Research Engineer, GitHub), Matt Pocock (Senior Developer Educator, AI Hero), Sophie Koonin (Web Discipline Lead, Monzo), Phil Hawksworth (MC)

    As AI reshapes how software gets built, what actually changes for engineers, teams, and developer tools? This panel explores the real-world impact of agentic workflows on software engineering - from code review and system design to cognitive skills, ownership, and developer experience. Expect practical insights, rapid-fire hot takes, and honest discussion from engineers building beyond the prompt.

  7. 16:30 – 17:00

    Vibe Coding as a Maker

    Matt Webb

    Matt will show his vibe coding experiments, from his AI clock to an app that points to the centre of the galaxy, and share some learnings from building hardware at his startup, Inanimate. Then we ask: what are the limits of vibing and agentic coding? And how might we create libraries that agents love?

  8. 17:00 – 17:10

    Closing Remarks

    Closing thoughts to wrap up the day and set the stage for the networking reception.

  9. 17:10 – 20:00

    Networking reception

The venue

IET London at 2 Savoy Place - a historical, Grade II listed building on the Thames, home to the Institution of Engineering and Technology.

Line drawing of IET London at 2 Savoy Place
IET London

Join us on 19 May in London

Early bird tickets are £149. Book your place or email info@ag-grid.com with any questions.

Register Now