10 posts
The capstone: an AI analyst covering the top public and private AI companies, assembled from the series' disciplines — a deterministic pipeline, graded evidence, an agent that answers only from tools, and a judge that must prove it can fail. Part 6 of six weeks building AI systems by hand.
Evidence for AI agents: a correct answer scored as a failure, four searches that never found the right shelf, and why the filing, not the model, decides what your system can know. Part 5 of six weeks building AI systems by hand.
Assurance for AI agents: answer keys written before the run, judges that need judging, the audit trail that caught an agent manufacturing its own evidence, and why every number needs a reference class. Part 4 of six weeks building AI systems by hand.
The bill of materials for a working AI agent — model, skeleton, traces, evidence, protocol, memory, harness — and the two layers no vendor can sell you. Part 3 of six weeks building AI systems by hand.
Six weeks of building AI systems by hand, written up for operators. Part 2: what an agent may actually do, what actually binds it, and the five levers that decide how much autonomy to grant.
I'm a COO. I spent six weeks of late nights building AI systems alongside frontier practitioners, and caught my own agent fabricating evidence inside a perfectly formatted report. What the hours bought, and why the bar for 'technical enough' has moved.
Insights from 2 weeks at Stripe exploring best practices for building top-performing teams. Building teams is equal parts art and science.
Everyone's first management role comes with growing pains. Here are 9 concepts every people manager should master.
In any organisation you will encounter many different types of performers. There will always be a mix of A+, B and C type people. Something I've been preoccupied by is how to maintain originality in organisations. I believe this is made possible through malleable top-performers and organisational planning and foresight on how to nurture 'Originals' in cultures should be a focus for every leader.
A founder and operator guide to scaling tech companies courtesy of Andy Grove. Andy Grove's management philosophy is a long-time favorite of Silicon Valley founders. During my time managing teams at Twitter this management framework was launched in the company by Dick Costolo as part of Twitter's people management and operations philosophy.