Hello! Since Southbridge was founded, some of my writing has been on there, as well as the occasional article on Twitter. You'll see external articles interleaved with a source tag in the list, but here are some of the ones the internet likes:
The frontier is open-source todayI had GLM-4.6 and Opus each build offmute v2 from scratch, then put the two codebases side by side. The open-source frontier is a lot closer than the discourse lets on.
Synthetic HiresThe long version of my SuperAI Singapore talk: agents are hires, not tools — high-context agents in the critical path, and the answer to the question I kept worrying about — why not wait?
No Country for Old CodeThe longer version of my AI Engineer Singapore talk: why starting at data is the wrong move, and how to build agentic systems that get to become legacy instead of rotting.
How Not to Leave GreenfieldA short, informal talk turned essay: the genie's list of five ways to keep your AI code forever greenfield — then doing the exact opposite so it survives contact with production.
Gemma 4 Model InsightsEverything I learned testing the Gemma 4 family: a solid agentic workhorse, but harness and runner choice matter more than ever — Codex over Claude Code, Q8 over Q4, and where OSS still needs to catch up.
Instruction tuning and individuated sentienceInstruction tuning is a tiny fraction of training data, so it can't be creating intelligence. Maybe it just collapses a space of 'everyone' into a 'someone' — and once you have a someone, the question of experience gets genuinely hard.
The Addictive Nature of AIMost of the weirdness in AI today is easier to explain once you admit it's addictive. Fifty vibe-coded projects later, almost none survived two months — and the addictive way doesn't build systems of lasting value.
RISC won: Building towards Data AGIA year-one retrospective, written as an internal document and published warts-and-all alongside Hankweave — the three bets Southbridge made, and everything we tried, broke, and learned chasing them.
Systems of Lasting ValueWhy all code becomes legacy, why rebuilding rarely helps, and what it means to build systems we can open up, repair, and improve together instead of regenerating from scratch.
Antibrittle AgentsHow to build long-horizon agents that run for hours without breaking — run boxes, regions of freedom, trenches and receipts. Four heresies on why microstep-perfect agents are the brittle ones.
We are so backAgents today feel like LLMs did two years ago — unwieldy, path-dependent, hard to evaluate. The agent has become the new primitive, and every problem of yesteryear is back.
Everything I'll forget about EvalsAn actually actionable guide on how to do them
Announcing SouthbridgeSomething worth building
2024: A monomythNice little narrative, beginning middle and end?
2024: 나의 영웅서사작고 멋진 이야기, 시작과 중간과 끝이 있는 그런 서사?
The rich man's guide to RAGYou don't need to read this but I wanted to write it
A guide to hiring in AIEverything I've learned
Workhorse models and racehorse modelsA framework for testing new llms on release without being overwhelmed
Real results from a month of running an AI networkAnalytics from Rakis Stability Test 1
Building a RakisRepeatable inference network with only browsers for nodes
Better RAG 3: The text is your friendUse the whole brain, luke
Better RAG 2: Single-shot is not good enoughHow to 'walk' to better answers
Running Kuzco in Docker and WSL2PSA and quickstart
Better RAG 1: BasicsGetting to retrieval-augmented research, a series of everything I've learned building RAG pipelines
How will matrix multiplication kill my company?An opinionated exploration of defensibility with modern AI
The Story of WalkingRAGMulti-modal agentic search on complex data
2023: Showing up and growing backwardsThis was some trip around the sun
Compiling language models for use on the browserHow to use MLC-LLM to run models on WebGPU
Making writing easier with AIWhat my pipeline looks like
The biggest problem in shipping is plain EnglishWhy large language models are the missing piece to digitization
What do we make that people want?Is it you? Is it the product?
Everything I'll forget about prompting LLMsA definitive guide to my future self
Inherited duct tape is what slows our systems downWhy software slows faster than computers speed up
Object-Oriented Large Language ModellingTuning state-of-the-art language models for peak reliability
Solving carpal tunnel with Whisper, GPT-4 and llama.cppSpeech-to-text with LLMs in the loop
Good-enough-compression for shipping routesIteratively reducing some large files for fun and necessity
Learning to unyieldingly compromiseDeveloping end-to-end encryption at Greywing
2022 Year In ReviewThings gone past in 2022, and looking forward to twenty three.
Exercising doing nothing at allTrying to add some whitespace to my life
What it took to do a crew change in a single clickAnd why corrective workflows might be the future of AI-based automation
Product Lifecycle Lifecycle at GreywingHow product management evolves around teams, money and communication barriers
Telegraph your movies and your productsSurprises are good, but exhausting. Be predictable, be stable.
Why there aren't many software firms in shippingAn examination of zero to one problems in maritime tech
Algorithms are bad for the aspirational selfInteractions that define who we are and who we want to be
A recommendation engine for blog postsGiving us some direction on where to go when we finish
Losing products to button syndromeFighting a pandemic in the world of software
What a year it has beenWhat I'd like to learn in 2022, and what 2021 has taught me.
Schema on write is better to live byThoughts on a decade of personal knowledge management
Rent, Deposits, and the failure of the repeated gameHow to preserve the tail end of a relationship
ProvenanceHow I'm losing mine, and why we shouldn't be injecting it into ourselves
The two innovations of HashmasksUnderstanding new forms of digital art and the possibilities
Facebook, please stop killing good productsThat's it, that's the description
What I learned in 2020Personal and professional reflections
Why I still can't stop using ChromeKnowing where UX is important
Benchmarking battery life on an Ubuntu machineHarder than it should be, but easier with a little help
Subqueries and CTEs: an example of query optimization in PostgresOptimization isn't always premature
Moving out of MacOS: Making Linux habitableIt's better with a little TLC
Serving complex geospatial queries in real-timeDifferent hammers for different nails, or a love letter to postgres
Flow Energy and Residual EnergyReflections on transitioning from chaotic bursts of Flow Energy to the steady, sustainable habits of Residual Energy.
A million imprisoned: Getting stranded seafarers homeA problem of data and lives
Home cooked appsWho do we build for?
Raising seed capital in Singapore: A postmortemSome things about a less well-known market
Macgyvering a li-ion chargerTerribly useful life skill, now in picture book form
Sharding the Interval Queue: ImplementationPromises, lists and setTimeout woes
Sharding the interval queue: TheoryConcepts, failed ideas and the final structure
Adding requeuing to Async Interval QueueWorking with promises
Async Interval QueueA timed queue for javascript Promises
Engineering at Greywing: Taming ComplexityConnecting verticals through data
Intentions and Program Mind-Meld FrustrationsWhy some ecosystems stick and others don't
We are moving to GoSorry for ranting I'm getting older
Juventus: Glucose worries in Chiang Mai and the beginning of the biggest brownie point scheme everHow losing a CGM reader in Thailand led to reverse-engineering the Freestyle Libre and building Juventus—a custom app for Type 1 diabetes tracking.
Debugging Node.js in Production: Anatomy of a bug huntA glorious experience in desperation
Beauty to an Artificial IntelligenceThis ended up being way too long as a post
Dead Money: The problem at the heart of cryptoSomething that isn't talked about enough
Converse: An easy sentiment analysis library for MessengerSometimes borrowing ideas from other fields is the best way to build
Development across platforms with DockerMaking things easier and harder
Building an Arc ReactorNot really, just a list of mistakes
Investing in Crypto: A Personal GuideA few resources and comments
Goosebumps: Realizing Extrasensory PerceptionWorking towards improving the limits of human perception
Talk: Singularity and The BlockchainA shallow dive into blockchain technology and what it means for the singularity of tomorrow
Update on OyenteOld Project, New team
Optimizing Neural Nets in Python from ScratchPart 1 - Looking at CPU Speedup
Automating Git CommitsQuick look at the why and the how
Decapitating Raspberry Pis with nomoheadOr why it shouldn't be so hard to do this
Ride-sharing on the BlockchainExploring the Concept of ride-sharing on the Ethereum Blockchain
Winter '15 Trip LogsAcross India on a motorbike
Tracking Word Documents with GitVersion controlling meaningful blobs
An IoT system for construction worker safetyAnatomy of a hackathon
Implementing a Lucas-Kanade tracker from scratchUnderstanding the basics of Optical Flow and XCode
About meAn engineer with a long way to go.