What It Looks Like to Give AI 80% of Your Project with Dan Cardinal, CTO at Beghou Consulting

In this episode of Modern CTO, host Joel Beasley interviews Dan Cardinal, CTO at Bagu Arc, about how his company is leveraging AI tools—specifically Blitzy—to achieve approximately 80% autonomous completion of software projects at scale. Dan shares how Bagu Arc, a tech-enabled consulting firm serving the healthcare and pharma sectors, faced challenges with sensitive data and compliance but found a pathway to AI adoption through rigorous operational controls already in place. By using Blitzy for a high-effort, low-strategy .NET migration project, they achieved 80% automation, with the remaining 20% involving human judgment on nuanced decisions. The episode highlights the transformative impact of AI-generated documentation, which not only reduces manual effort but also enhances other AI systems by providing rich context. Dan emphasizes that AI doesn’t need to be perfect—just valuable—and shares leadership insights on overcoming self-doubt to make decisive choices, especially in uncertain domains like AI adoption.