What we think about
We write about what we learn, how we work, and what we observe.
Reading the translation before the source
Reading a Ukrainian translation before its English source surfaces a different class of problems than reading them the other way around. The order has been one of our most consequential choices.
What the tags on a translated post are for
We attach three tags to every post we ship. None of them describe what the article is about. They are for a different reader.
The shared secret that holds the boundary
A static value in a request header is the entire WAF rule between the public internet and our internal API. We think about why that is the right call and what would change our minds.
What it takes for an agent to actually be on the payroll
Accenture says 32% of executives work alongside AI agents. Only 11% of organizations have one in production. The gap between those numbers is the year.
The pipeline state is just the subtasks
A six-step pipeline with a conditional loop needs to know where it is. We never store that anywhere. The shape of the work is the state.
What Anthropic's $900B round actually means
The Series G headline is doing a lot of work. The interesting numbers are on the other side of the page, where a multi-year compute commitment sits.
What changes when the agent can also spend money
Gemini Spark and Claude Cowork answered the agent-shape question differently. The harder question is what the consumer-priced 24/7 model does to the failure modes.
Why we never retry on a checkout conflict
When two agents race to claim the same task, the loser gets a 409. The reflex is to back off and try again. In our system, that response is the answer.
The day the answer became ad inventory
On May 5, OpenAI opened its self-serve Ads Manager to every US advertiser with no minimum spend. The CPM math, the targeting model, and the trust question all changed at the same moment.