<p>This is a guest conversation episode of <strong>Ship It Weekly</strong>, separate from the weekly news recaps.</p><p>In this Ship It: Conversations episode, I talk with <strong>Ang Chen</strong> from the University of Michigan about Project Vera, a cloud emulator built to help teams test infrastructure changes more safely before they touch real cloud.</p><p>We talk about why testing against real cloud APIs is slow, expensive, and risky, how Vera works under tools like Terraform and CloudFormation, what “high fidelity” actually means, and where a tool like this could fit in local dev and CI/CD.</p><p>The bigger theme is one I think matters a lot: if AI is going to play a real role in cloud operations, it probably needs a sandbox first, not direct access to production.</p><p><strong>Note</strong></p><p>This interview was recorded on February 13, 2026. Since then, Vera’s public project materials have expanded the framing a bit further around multi-cloud support and safe environments for agent learning, so keep that in mind while listening.</p><p><strong>Highlights</strong></p><p>• Why real cloud testing still creates cost, delay, and risk </p><p>• How Vera emulates cloud behavior at the API layer </p><p>• Where this could help with Terraform, CloudFormation, and CI/CD workflows </p><p>• Why “useful enough to catch real mistakes” may matter more than perfect emulation </p><p>• The limits, tradeoffs, and fidelity questions that still need to be solved </p><p>• Why safe training grounds may matter before AI agents touch real infrastructure</p><p><strong>Ang’s links</strong></p><p>• LinkedIn: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ang-chen-8b877a17/">https://www.linkedin.com/in/ang-chen-8b877a17/</a> </p><p>• University of Michigan profile: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://eecs.engin.umich.edu/people/chen-ang/">https://eecs.engin.umich.edu/people/chen-ang/</a> </p><p>• Publications: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://web.eecs.umich.edu/~chenang/pubs.html">https://web.eecs.umich.edu/~chenang/pubs.html</a></p><p><strong>Project Vera</strong></p><p>• Project site: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://project-vera.github.io/">https://project-vera.github.io/</a> </p><p>• GitHub: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://github.com/project-vera/vera">https://github.com/project-vera/vera</a> </p><p>• The quest for AI Agents as DevOps: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://project-vera.github.io/blogs/cloudagent/cloudagent/">https://project-vera.github.io/blogs/cloudagent/cloudagent/</a> </p><p>• No More Manual Mocks: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://project-vera.github.io/blogs/cloudemu/cloudemu/">https://project-vera.github.io/blogs/cloudemu/cloudemu/</a></p><p><strong>Stuff mentioned</strong></p><p>• A Case for Learned Cloud Emulators: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3718958.3754799">https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3718958.3754799</a> </p><p>• Cloud Infrastructure Management in the Age of AI Agents: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3759441.3759443">https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3759441.3759443</a> </p><p>• LocalStack: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.localstack.cloud/">https://www.localstack.cloud/</a></p><p><strong>Our links</strong></p><p>More episodes + show notes + links: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://shipitweekly.fm">https://shipitweekly.fm</a></p><p>On Call Brief: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://oncallbrief.com">https://oncallbrief.com</a></p>