This Is Fine
AI is accelerating vulnerability discovery and exploitation while exposing the accumulated fragility of software and the ambiguity of agent authorization.
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2026
The latest incarnation of saarthi
Believing in reincarnation comes with being (notionally) a Hindu. So let me introduce the latest incarnation of saarthi - my personal assistant.
Read essayA cave under the house
My grandfather claimed that there was a magical cave under his house, full of treasure. We just needed to dig through the floor, but my grandmother wouldn't
Read essayNobody Home: AI Agents and Blindsight
I'm back in the States, very jet lagged, and can't sleep. So, as you do, I've been spending way too much time reading about AI agents doing bad things.
Read essayLiving Below the API
I am on my way back home after a couple of weeks in India. During my time there, I spent a lot of time thinking about the future of work.
Read essayIs Software Engineering a Dead End?
Is software engineering a dead end? Are the jobs going away?
Read essayWhat Is a Software Engineer Now?
I left my home town of Vadodara almost 30 years ago. While it still feels like home, the city has changed - it has grown, it has become more chaotic, it has
Read essayRest in Git, Little Buddy
Yesterday I said goodbye to a companion of the last seven months. It was bittersweet, and also a bit of a relief.
Read essayWhen AI Agents Go Rogue
As I write this post, my kids are splashing around in a swimming pool. I am squinting at this iPad balanced precariously on a deck chair in the bright
Read essayIs Software Engineering Still a Viable Career?
Choosing software engineering as a career might seem reckless at a time when AI can write most of your code and agents are running wild hacking companies.
Read essayThe Frontier Model Tax
Last week I attempted to solve a thorny political and economic issue by running a small experiment. It involved LLMs, about $20, and the results made me think
Read essayThe Box Might Not Hold
It's been quite the week. A pair of OpenAI models broke out of their test environment and hacked Hugging Face. It felt like the right time to revisit a
Read essayThe Toyota Tundra and Chinese AI
I noticed something weird when I visited the UK last year. Almost silent cars with unfamiliar names like BYD, Omoda and MG gliding along the high streets.
Read essayCollaboration Agents and the Statistical Engine of Mediocrity
A year ago, while tightening up a blog post together, Claude got sassy with me: "LLMs are statistical engines of mediocrity by design." It was describing
Read essayUnlimited Intelligence, More Drudgery
I went into the July 4th weekend exhausted. It was the culmination of travel, client deadlines, multiple parallel initiatives. I have also been quiet here on
Read essayApple’s Deliberate AI Strategy
I am excited about a new iOS release for the first time in five years. It looks like we may finally get a Siri that works and can use my data, stored on my
Read essayDress for the Slide
There's a saying in the motorcycling world: "Dress for the slide, not for the ride."
Read essayMaps and Territories
AI can make you sound fluent in a domain you don’t understand. People who actually know find out very quickly. Credibility gone in the token exhaust of an LLM
Read essayArsenal and the Passage of Time
What did Arsenal winning the Premier League title teach me about applied AI?
Read essayThe Two Drivers
AI promises transformation. Transformation of the way we work, possibly the way we live and the way we organize our societies. From the utopian dreamers to
Read essayAnthropic, xAI and the Inference Moat
In Sebastian Mallaby's The Infinity Machine, Demis Hassabis is quoted as saying that he sees one lab getting to AGI. In its founding charter, OpenAI made
Read essayThree Essays About the AI Future
It's Sunday and in the spirit of the weekend, here's a somewhat off-topic post.
Read essayRunning AI in Production
I am a consultant. My job is to understand my clients' needs and help them build products to meet those needs. Over the last 3 years, the vast majority of my
Read essayThe Case for an AI Fast
A lot of software engineers are quietly miserable right now. They probably include your senior tech lead and your engineering manager.
Read essayScars From Building AI
At Jeavio, we were building AI applications back when Boris Cherny was known for his TypeScript book. We’ve had surprise OpenAI bills before “token-maxxing”
Read essayWhen Engineering Stops Saying No
There is a skit from the early 2000s BBC show Little Britain called "computer says no." A bank teller responds to a customer trying to get a loan with the
Read essayWhere to Invest in AI
AI has the potential to transform businesses, but figuring out where to invest and how to integrate AI can be challenging. On May 7, Andrei and I will be
Read essayThe Doppelgänger
Over the last couple of years I’ve run into a curious adversary. A doppelgänger. He writes clean, grammatically correct, structurally sound articles. He
Read essayPath Dependence
AI has a path dependence problem.
Read essaySurviving the Dark Forest
If you want to understand despair, try building a book tracking app and then searching the App Store to see what the competition looks like. Hint: it’s brutal
Read essayThe Spigot
I keep thinking about how we ended up here.
Read essayOn Agents and Harnesses
I run a personal agent called Saarthi. It is built on OpenClaw, an open-source agent framework. I have configured Saarthi around my own information processing
Read essayChatbots are driving a generational divide
Over the past couple of years, I’ve noticed a shift in behavior among the people I work with in India. Bolder career moves, pivots to free-lancing, open
Read essayThe Smiley Face Won
In February 2023, I stood in front of my engineering team and showed them a slide with a Shoggoth on it.
Read essayExchanging Insight for Output
I’ve spent the couple of years helping teams adopt AI tools while using them heavily myself. One pattern keeps showing up, and I don’t think we’re talking
Read essayCursor vs. Claude Code on Token Costs
Work by Krunal and his team at Jeavio found that Cursor is significantly more expensive (when it comes to Tokens) than Claude Code.
Read essayWhy multi-modal embeddings are a big deal.
I was walking the dog and listening to a podcast (as you do) when the topic of Anthropic's recent entanglements with the Pentagon came up. I half-remembered
Read essayGoverning AI-Assisted Engineering
Amazon held a mandatory engineering meeting yesterday to address a pattern of outages linked to AI-assisted code changes. Their SVP acknowledged that site
Read essayWho Gets to Decide?
The Anthropic vs. Pentagon standoff can be seen as both a contractual dispute and another skirmish in the never-ending culture war that has consumed public
Read essayLiving With a Personal Agent
Last week I introduced Saarthi, my OpenClaw agent. I've been adding tasks steadily: synthesizing newsletters, monitoring prediction markets, writing more
Read essayAnthropic, the Pentagon, and the Judgment of Future Claude
I have many takes on the Anthropic / Pentagon contract situation. But I won’t talk politics here. Since it’s the weekend, let’s turn on the lava lamp, and
Read essayWhen Your App Becomes a Context Provider
Last week, I gave Claude access to my reading life.
Read essayContext Engineering as Narration
User profiles are stories compressed into spreadsheets. LLMs let us uncompress them. This is both a context engineering challenge and a storytelling one.
Read essayThe Lego Model: How Tool Calling Changes the Way We Build AI Applications
"What should I read next?" seems like a simple question. But answering it well requires knowing what the user is currently reading, what they've finished
Read essayBuilding at the Speed of Thought
On building QuietReads, Claude Code, and the inversion in software economics
Read essayWhat if ASI Leads to Stasis?
I recently read and reviewed Nick Harkaway's Titanium Noir, a noir detective novel set in a world ruled by Titans, humans made immortal and superhuman through
Read essayBook Review: Titanium Noir by Nick Harkaway
Titanium Noir is a noir novel first, set in an interesting world second. World-building and story take a backseat to tone and genre conventions, which is
Read essayA Letter to 2025
Dear Rushi,
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