Interactive notebooks, introduced by the Jupyter project, have become vital for data science, research, and data exploration. However, as projects expand in complexity, traditional notebooks often face challenges. Issues like hidden state, non-reproducible execution, inefficient version control, and the difficulty of integrating notebook code into real software systems hinder the transition from exploration to production. Additionally, sharing results typically requires collaborators to reconstruct entire environments, reducing interactivity and delaying feedback.
Marimo is an open-source Python notebook created to tackle these challenges head-on. Akshay Agrawal, Marimo’s creator and former Google Brain employee, discusses notebook limitations, Marimo’s role in bridging research and production, and the place of notebooks in an AI-assisted development era with Kevin Ball.
Kevin Ball, also known as KBall, is the VP of Engineering at Mento and an independent coach for engineers and engineering leaders. He has co-founded two companies, was CTO, founded the San Diego JavaScript meetup, and organizes the AI inaction discussion group with Latent Space.
For the full transcript of this episode, please [click here](http://softwareengineeringdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/SED1905-Marimo.txt).