AI Models.
How models work, what they cost to run, and how to judge whether one is right for the job.
AI Models
Tool Use and Agents: A Model That Can Act Needs Boundaries
Once a model can call tools, its mistakes have consequences. Design the permissions and checks before the clever part.
AI Models
Reading Benchmarks Without Being Misled by Them
A benchmark score summarizes a narrow test. The number is useful only when you know what the test measures and whether its questions leaked into training.
AI Models
What a Model Learns From Its Data, and What It Cannot Learn
Training data shapes what a model knows, how it writes and what it overlooks. The gaps are as informative as the strengths.
AI Models
Alignment in Plain Language: Helpfulness, Honesty and Caution
Teaching a model to be helpful, honest and careful involves trade-offs. Understanding them explains refusals, hedges and occasional over-caution.
AI Models
Quantization: Smaller Models and What Is Lost
Storing a model's numbers with fewer bits shrinks it and speeds it up. The loss is real, and it depends on the task.
AI Models
Latency and Streaming: Why the First Token Matters
People judge an AI feature by how soon something appears, not by when the answer is finished. Streaming changes that experience.
AI Models
Getting Structured Output From a Model Reliably
A program needs a predictable shape. Constraining the format, validating it and planning for failure turns a chatty model into a dependable component.
AI Models
Reading a Model Card Like an Engineer
A model card lists what its makers chose to say. The useful part is often what it leaves out and how the tests were run.
AI Models
Routing Each Request to the Right Model
Sending every request to the largest model is expensive and often unnecessary. A simple routing layer can save money without hurting quality.
AI Models
What 'Memory' in an AI Assistant Really Means
Remembering a preference across sessions usually means a stored note that gets added to the context. It is useful, and it has rules worth understanding.
AI Models
Why the Same Prompt Can Return Different Answers
Sampling, hardware differences and model updates all change output. Knowing the sources of variation helps you test and explain results.
AI Models
Models Get Retired: Planning for the Next Version
The model you build on will be replaced. Designing for that change, with tests and swappable components, is part of the work.

