---
title: "Nextflow Summit 2026 - Boston"
description: "Bioinformatics in the agentic age: Practical tips learnt from RustQC and rewrites.bio"
url: "https://phil.ewels.co.uk/talks/2026/04/30/nextflow_summit"
site: "phil.ewels.co.uk"
author: "Phil Ewels"
section: "Talks"
type: "Conference talk"
date: "2026-04-30"
location: "boston"
event: "https://summit.nextflow.io/2026/boston/agenda/rustqc-and-rewrites-bio/"
slides: "https://phil.ewels.co.uk/talks/2026/04/30/nextflow_summit_2026_boston/boston26-phil.pdf"
video: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbA_d4oOpDQ"
---

# Nextflow Summit 2026 - Boston

> Bioinformatics in the agentic age: Practical tips learnt from RustQC and rewrites.bio

![Photo of talk](https://phil.ewels.co.uk/talks/2026/04/30/nextflow_summit_2026_boston/summit_phil.jpg)

## Abstract

AI capabilities have shifted in 2026: we’ve reached a threshold where domain experts can create production-quality tool rewrites in days, without prior experience of the programming language. [RustQC](https://seqeralabs.github.io/RustQC/), a single Rust binary that replaces fifteen RNA-seq QC tools with a 60× speedup, was built in only a few weeks despite me never having written Rust code before. I wasn't alone: multiple teams have been independently producing similar AI-assisted rewrites within weeks of each other.

I'll walk through the RustQC architecture, and describe how I used Nextflow and nf-test as a test harness for agentic development. Deterministic pipelines, cached intermediate outputs, and snapshot-based assertions give AI agents a tight feedback loop where output correctness is enforced automatically, not left to the LLM's judgment.

Finally, I'll explore how this experience led to [https://rewrites.bio](https://rewrites.bio) - a set of principles for responsible rewrites. I’ll talk about different rewrite strategies (1:1 rewrites, upgrades or architectural rethinks), when each is appropriate, and when not to rewrite a tool. I'll make the case that we can have the speed gains without fragmenting the ecosystem that keeps results comparable across studies.

---

From the personal website of Phil Ewels, a software developer and bioinformatician in Stockholm, Sweden: https://phil.ewels.co.uk/
The whole site as Markdown: https://phil.ewels.co.uk/llms.txt