James Ward

In case you missed it, the book that Bruce Eckel, Bill Frasure, and I have been working on for 4 years is out! Effect Oriented Programming: A paradigm for creating reliable, adaptable, testable systems. Optimized for mobile reading! Get the digital or print version at: effectorientedprogramming.com

Missed this session? @jamesward.com shows how SkillsJars lets you version and share agent skills across JVM projects in “Agent Skills for Code Assistants and Custom Agents” at IntelliJ IDEA Conf 2026. Watch on YouTube: youtu.be/Mc-Lk7sF3ZM

Starting soon at IntelliJ IDEA Conf 2026. SkillsJars brings Agent Skills to the JVM ecosystem using JARs and Maven repositories. Agent Skills for Code Assistants and Custom Agents by @jamesward.com 🕑 9:00–10:00 am UTC 👉 youtube.com/live/fi_mGfi... #IntelliJIDEAConf

Super fun session with @maritvandijk.bsky.social about Agent Skills and SkillsJars

What if AI agent skills were as easy to share as Java libraries? At IntelliJ IDEA Conf 2026, @jamesward.com introduces SkillsJars – a new approach to packaging, versioning, and sharing Agent Skills using the familiar Jar and Maven ecosystem. 🗓 September 8–9 👉 Register now: jb.gg/5vx31c

Just improved agent experience in sbt-reload by adding reloadStatus, reloadPause, and reloadResume tasks. Use your AGENTS<dot>md to tell the AI to pause the reloader when making a sequence of changes.

It's all just there @jamesward.com 😁 This is valid Kotlin in 2.4.0 😍 On top of that Kotlin has so many other awesome features to combine this with, and you can write all the code examples from your book effect oriented programming in very elegant ways. You should really give this a proper spin.

I really enjoyed the conversation! Thank you!

🍃 Bootiful Spring AI by @starbuxman.joshlong.com / @jamesward.com @ Spring I/O 2026 ▶️ Video: youtu.be/nHnKReitDXc #springio26

Well I cooked up a Scala ZIO library for AI inference with Amazon Bedrock. Took quite a bit of churning to get to an API that I like. Check out the repo: github.com/jamesward/zi... And the full sample: github.com/jamesward/he...

🍃 Beyond local tools: Deep dive into MCP with Spring AI by @jamesward.com / Maximilian Schellhorn @ Spring I/O 2026 ▶️ Video: youtu.be/gH9bheS0ifU 🔗 Slides: 2026.springio.net/slides/beyon... #springio26

Is the JVM the best platform for AI agents in 2026? @jamesward.com (AWS, Agentic AI Foundation) makes the case: Spring AI, Embabel, Ktor, MCP, Skills, and why typed languages have a built-in AI advantage. 🎥 Watch now: https://youtu.be/ACP0Nx-sW10

I've made a bunch of Agent Experience enhancements to javadocs.dev More MCP tools, better markdown support - including Accepts: text/markdown, and llms.txt Along the way I built a Scala ZIO HTTP MCP server library: github.com/jamesward/zi... Give it a whirl and let me know what you think!

The ecosystem around Java/JVM AI tech is now pretty vast! With the help of some other Java Champions I put together a list of the Java-related agent frameworks, inference tech, code assistants tools, key people, and the best learning resources: ai4jvm.com

This may be a first... We are now distributing the Effect Oriented Programming book via MCP! This brings the knowledge & examples into your AI. Now you can vibe-read instead of actually read. ;) Details: effectorientedprogramming.com/mcp/

I'm super excited to announce skillsjars.com - Agent Skills that are versioned, security scanned, and available in your package manager (via Maven Central). Details on what it is and how to use it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTh1...

#GOTOpodcast: Effect Oriented Programming W/ Bill Frasure, @bruceeckel.bsky.social, @jamesward.com & @andrewhl.bsky.social What if side effects weren’t something you “handle”… but something you model? Full episode out now 🎧 gotopia.tech/podcast

Created my first Agent Skill where I tried to distill my principles for "good code" Check out the "Zen of James" Skill and let me know what I'm missing: github.com/jamesward/sk...

💥 Build, deploy & scale AI agents! Join @jamesward.com & @starbuxman.joshlong.com at #Devnexus for a full-day, hands-on workshop using Spring AI, MCP, Java, & Amazon Bedrock. devnexus.com/events/hands... Learn RAG, chat memory, & multi-agent systems — all in one session. 🎟️ Tickets- devnexus.com

What most devs get wrong about MCP is thinking that it is primarily for AI code assistants. MCP is primarily useful as an enterprise integration protocol.

💥 Build, deploy & scale AI agents! Join @jamesward.com & @starbuxman.joshlong.com at #Devnexus for a full-day, hands-on workshop using Spring AI, MCP, Java, & Amazon Bedrock. devnexus.com/events/hands... Learn RAG, chat memory, & multi-agent systems — all in one session. 🎟️ Tickets- devnexus.com

🎥 Building AI Agents with Spring AI + Amazon Bedrock Curious about how Spring AI and Amazon Bedrock come together to build the next generation of AI agents? 👉 Watch the video announcement from @starbuxman.joshlong.com and @jamesward.com to get a taste of what’s coming. youtube.com/shorts/_4IZi...

💥 Build, deploy & scale AI agents! Join @jamesward.com & @starbuxman.joshlong.com at #Devnexus for a full-day, hands-on workshop using Spring AI, MCP, Java, & Amazon Bedrock. devnexus.com/events/hands... Learn RAG, chat memory, & multi-agent systems — all in one session. 🎟️ devnexus.com

If you're interested in learning all about MCP, check out the Deep Dive talk that Maximilian Schellhorn and I did this year at Devoxx: www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgKs...

This week @starbuxman.joshlong.com and I made two videos on building AI Agents with the latest milestone of Spring AI (Java or Kotlin) and Embabel, using Amazon Bedrock for inference: www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmEV... www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpeY...

Structured Concurrency by @jamesward.com: Better cancellation & error handling in concurrent code. Covers Java/Kotlin/Scala approaches. Makes fan-out/fan-in easier! youtu.be/XOSR0Asq4h0?...

Learn to keep your apps platform-agnostic, scale efficiently, and optimize deployment using Spring and Testcontainers in @jamesward.com ’s and @mmeckes.bsky.social ’s Devoxx UK 2025 talk "Write Once, Deploy Everywhere: From Containers to Serverless." Watch here - buff.ly/iIlffzZ

Discover how #PklLang is redefining #InfrastructureAsCode! Unlike complex #YAML, Pkl uses schemas & constraints for robust configuration management, catching errors early and providing clear feedback. 🎥 Watch the video by Dan Chao (Software Engineer, Apple): bit.ly/43ptkpm #Kubernetes #IaC

The Spring AI 1.0 release is a total game changer for millions of developers, enabling them to easily integrate AI & MCP into their Java & Kotlin systems! Check out my blog about why this release is so monumental: community.aws/content/2xLk...

Here is the recording of the "Write Once, Deploy Everywhere: From Containers to Serverless" presentation that @mmeckes.bsky.social and I did at @devoxx.uk www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kgN...

This could go badly, but I've deployed a public MCP server for testing purposes. Built with Spring AI & Kotlin. Try it out: mcp-test.jamesward.com Code: github.com/jamesward/he...

Of course you can build a multi-turn MCP-based Agent on top of Amazon Bedrock Converse and the MCP Java SDK, just with a lot more code than abstractions (Spring AI, Quarkus, Langchain4j, etc). Here's the code: github.com/aws-samples/...

Them: "You can build a multi-turn AI Agent connected to MCP servers in only 50 lines of code" Spring AI: Hold my beer, now watch this:

MCP & Wasm are like peanut butter and jelly. In episode 111 of @happypathprogramming.com, we take some bites into the best AI sandwich ever made with @nilslice.bsky.social: creators.spotify.com/pod/show/hap...

Just finished upgrading some AWS + Spring AI + MCP samples from Spring AI M6 to the new M7. Pretty straightforward but if you need a reference, check out the samples: github.com/aws-samples/...

Had a great chat with Justin Reock from @getdx.bsky.social about developer productivity on Episode 110 of @happypathprogramming.com: creators.spotify.com/pod/show/hap...

The amazon-q-cli package is now in Nix unstable!

📣 Join us LIVE this Monday for Spring Office Hours S4E9! We're excited to welcome @jamesward.com, Principal Developer Advocate at AWS, to discuss running MCP-Based Agents on AWS with Spring AI. Learn how to build AI applications using MCP and Nova. 🔴 Watch: www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5JD...

Thanks Christian and other Spring AI devs for making it so easy to work with Amazon Bedrock & MCP! Here is the corresponding video that @starbuxman.joshlong.com and I created: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y291... And the code: github.com/aws-samples/...

🚀 The MCP Java SDK core module provides default STDIO & SSE client/server transports - no external web frameworks needed! Build MCP clients/servers in plain Java with both Async (Reactor) & Sync APIs. Spring support is optional. 🔗 Minimal deps: central.sonatype.com/artifact/io....