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Local-First AI

Deep dives and field notes on local-first AI, agentic architecture, and what is actually working in 2026, with primary sources and reproducible benchmarks.

Showing 29 of 38 posts in Agent architecture · clear

Deep dives

Long-form research articles with primary sources, benchmarks, and reference tables.

Field notes

AI Agent Conference NYC: 10 Takeaways

The 10 things from AI Agent Conference 2026 NYC (May 4-5, NY Hilton Midtown) that are actually load-bearing if you ship agents in 2026. The trust paradox, CrewAI's 42% AI-authored code, the iceberg under every project, AX as the new UX, and what the panels from Datadog, LanceDB, Carta, and the Codex/Linear/Graphite room actually said.

agentsproductionconferenceshitlevals

AI Dev SF: 10 Takeaways

The 10 things from AI Dev 26 SF (April 28-29, Pier 48) that are actually load-bearing if you build agentic systems in 2026. Marc Brooker on defects, Andrew Ng on PM bottlenecks, Bain's 8-subgraph payroll system, the 4-legged identity, hybrid doc OCR, and the simulation sandbox every action-taking agent needs.

agentsproductionconferencesevalssecurity

Shadow Testing: From 70% to 98% in Four Weeks

The single highest-leverage decision when shipping mission-critical autonomous agents. Production is the only truth.

agentsproductiontestingevals

Swarm vs Monolith

Why five specialized $0.01 agents beat one $0.50 god model, and what the multi-agent crowd gets wrong about it.

agentsarchitecturepatternsproduction

Notes on Human-in-the-Loop

Why human-in-the-loop is the only ethical and profitable way to scale agentic AI in a world of bot fatigue.

hitlagentsethicsproduction

AX: When Your Users Are Agents

Agent Experience is the new SEO. Here is what it means, what changes, and the four-step audit to figure out how your product looks to the agents already using it.

axagentsuxseodesign

Below the Waterline: What Decides Whether Your Agent Ships

The hidden engineering that decides whether your agent makes it to production. The 65/95 gap and the three foundations underneath it.

agentsproductioninfrastructureevals

Document OCR for Agentic Workflows

90% of enterprise data is locked in PDFs. The 2026 pipeline that gets it out is not RAG, not vision-only, and not the OCR you remember from 2018.

ocragentsdocumentsvlmllamaindex

Notes on the EU AI Act Deadline for Agentic Systems

Privacy, security, and consent when agents have access to your terminal and your sensitive data. The 2026 framework, and the EU AI Act deadline most teams are sleeping on.

ethicsagentssecurityprivacyai-act

MCP, Honestly: What It Is and What It Is Not

What the Model Context Protocol actually is, what it gets right, where it leaks, and why the local-first version is the cleaner story.

mcpagentsprotocolslocal-firstollama

How Agents Burn Through Runway, and How to Stop Them

The engineering math behind preventing an agentic loop from burning through your monthly runway in one night.

agentseconomicslocal-inferenceops

How Agents Remember, and How They Forget

Why agents forget by default, what the four types of memory actually are, and how to build a system that compounds across sessions.

memoryagentscontext-engineeringneo4j

OAuth Was Built for Three Actors. Agents Are the Fourth.

OAuth was designed for three actors. Agentic systems have four. Here is what breaks, what RFC 8693 fixes, and why most teams are shipping shared credentials anyway.

identityoauthagentsmcpsecurity

The 40K Token Wall

Why bigger context windows are not the answer, and what production-tuned engineers actually trust in 2026.

context-engineeringagentsragevals

Simulation Sandboxes for Agents

The fastest 2026 teams are testing autonomous agents in synthetic enterprise environments before any customer is exposed. With the case for it and the open-source pieces to build one.

agentstestingsimulationevalsproduction

The Death of the Junior Dev

What agentic workflows are actually doing to entry-level engineering, and what to do about it.

careersagentsai-native-teamshiring

What Vibe Coding Became

How to lead a codebase by stating intent instead of writing syntax, and the discipline that keeps it from falling apart.

agentsvibe-codingclaude-codeai-native

Plan-and-Execute vs ReAct: Picking Your Agent's Brain

The two dominant agent reasoning patterns in 2026, what they get right, where each one fails, and how to know which to pick.

agentspatternsreactplan-and-executedesign

How a Solo Founder Hits $1M ARR in 2026

Pieter Levels at $420K a month. Marc Lou at $1M a year across twelve micro-SaaS. Tony Dinh at $1M working twenty hours a week. The narrow real pattern, with sources, costs, and where it breaks.

startupsai-nativeagentsoperationsfounders

Building a Personal AI Agent in a Weekend

The build, the OpenClaw config, and the first agent worth running. End to end on a Framework 16 with 96GB unified memory.

amdrocmopenclawagentslocal-first

Self-Healing CI/CD Patterns

Agentic loops that detect, diagnose, and fix deployment errors before you see the notification. With the workflow that actually works in 2026.

devopsci-cdagentsproductionobservability

Find Your Agent-Ready Tasks in 90 Minutes

A framework for finding which 20% of your tasks are agent-ready before you write a line of code.

smbagentsauditautomationframework

An Agent for Competitive Intelligence

Using Apify, Firecrawl, and a local model to monitor every move your competitors make in real time. With the architecture and the weekly digest format that actually gets read.

competitive-intelagentsapifyfirecrawlmonitoring

The Cold Email Agent That Still Works in 2026

A research-first outbound agent that scrapes news, LinkedIn, and financials before drafting an email. With the architecture, the prompts, and the guardrails.

salesagentsn8noutboundautomation

The Zero-Inbox Agent

Triage that does not just summarize. It prepares the drafts and fetches the data, and you approve. The 60-line config that actually works.

agentsn8nollamainboxautomation