Recent content on RAW Works
As usual, I can’t help but dive right into anything that comes out of Omar Khattab’s lab. “ Machine Studying ” is a very interesting blog post that attempts to define “expertise” and “intelligence” based on an agent’s ability to quickly learn new material from a corpus. “In a way, Machine Learning asks how a system can improve from data…
Agent skills are a powerful and portable way to transform generally capable AI agents into specifically useful tools — even teammates. There are skills for almost anything you can imagine: doing your taxes , setting up Cloudflare , speaking like a caveman , generating algorithmic art …there’s even a skill dedicated to industrial brutalism . Skills became so easy to make that the next…
I personally do not care if my AI programs do their reasoning in latent space or code. I want results. I am currently very intrigued by LongCoT , a new benchmark that is designed to push the limits of what is possible with today’s LLMs. Part of the original intention of the benchmark was to create something that would be both challenging for LLMs and less enmeshed with the details of the…
Reasoning models were the first clear proof that language model capability can scale with test-time compute. Recursive language models (RLMs) ask what the correct abstraction for spending that compute is. The insight behind RLMs is obvious in hindsight: it is the direct marriage of two important axes of model capability — reasoning and tool use. This is more radical than it first sounds. RLMs…
A few days ago I showed Sonnet 4.5 + dspy.RLM hitting 45.4% on LongCoT-Mini . Exciting results, but a bit pricey for my taste. So I set out to see what might be possible with some very small models. First, I wanted to run a 3x2 comparison matrix of doing LLM vs. RLM vs. DSPy.RLM for both Qwen 3 8B and the MIT OASYS RLM finetune . I will need to save the full analysis for another day (I…
After the LongMemEval experiments in February , I’ve been hungry to find a better benchmark that will actually showcase the power of recursive language models (RLMs) on useful tasks. LongCoT is exactly that: a benchmark built to stress-test long-horizon reasoning. As soon as I saw the benchmark, I aimed DSPy.RLM at it. (Even before reading the paper .) The setup Model: claude-sonnet-4-5 for…
Over the last 2 days, we’ve stumbled upon a really powerful coding agent interaction pattern: git notes as an underground information network. Git notes are both ubiquitous (part of git) and “invisible” (GitHub chose not to display them). This presents a very interesting communication channel for agents, who can now include rich details and discussions about the code without…
I built ypi — a recursive coding agent. It’s Pi that can call itself. The name comes from the Y combinator in lambda calculus — the fixed-point combinator that enables recursion. (“rpi” has other connotations.) The idea was inspired by Recursive Language Models (RLM), which showed that an LLM with a code REPL and a llm_query() function can recursively decompose problems, analyze…
My morning’s notes from yesterday: As I was waiting for Claude Code to help me with my goal of modifying DSPy to be able to “RLM everything”, I came across this result from Mastra.AI which describes a SOTA result on LongMemEval using an “observational memory” pre-processing approach. As you can see, my thought was “maybe RLM will blow this out of the…
I’m noticing an inversion of caution between the LLMs themselves and the behavior in their official coding agent harnesses. Claude.ai is very cautious and PC, but Claude Code with skipped permissions will happily plow through obstacles, getting shit done for sure, but perhaps bricking your machine or posting your private data somewhere public or just wrecking your git repo. ChatGPT is…
Inspired by last week’s research report from Jude Gao - “AGENTS.md outperforms skills in our agent evals” - this weekend my agents worked hard to make dirpack . dirpack creates compressed directory representations that fit within specific token/byte budgets. dirpack is tuned to attempt to give the best index representation that it can fit in the budget, with “best”…
After years of being frustrated by the inability of AI to read my handwritten notes, I am frankly shocked to report that this morning Claude Opus 4.5 simply one-shotted my crappy handwriting. The singularity is nigh… My handwritten notes from 12.4.25 Here’s what Claude transcribed: 12.4.25 It sucks that even deep research is just filled with slop, because google is filled with slop.…
I’m often asked how big my company is—how many people I employ full-time. The answer is one. Most people lose interest at that point. Tim Ferriss The 4-Hour Workweek (2007) It is not crazy to imagine a company with no employees. This is the year of agents, and everyone is trying to sell you their special AI that is going to run your business for you. The idea of extremely small teams…
Unfortunately, we seem to be trending towards a world where the best AI models aren’t available via API. Fortunately, Eric Provencher made Repo Prompt . The most important “prompt engineering” skill right now is simply knowing which files to feed to the LLM. Repo Prompt makes that fun and easy (for both the humans and the LLMs). Hat tip to Paul Gauthier for aider copy/paste mode,…
Agents are coming, and there is nothing more frustrating for an AI agent than a human UI. Agents love APIs. Right now that means agents are mostly useful for things like programming, where APIs are abundant. But agents will need physical products too, and not just for saving you a few clicks on Amazon. Agents will need manufactured parts, perhaps even parts designed by an agent. It sounds a little…
When I was in graduate school, I thought 3D printing was dumb. Then I spent ten years building a 3D company. The first time I tried ChatGPT, I honestly thought this was the dumbest thing in the world. Why are so many people talking about this? Now, I’m using LLMs for almost everything I work on. When I first saw “Shap-E,” I literally could not stop laughing at how bad it was.…
“Tough times don’t last, tough people do.” Gregory Peck
Happy Solstice! My ornament this year is virtual. Copy this link into your browser if the embed below looks weird. On mobile, use the native browser (Safari on iOS, Chrome on Android) to view in AR. https://ar.polyspectra.com/ar/M1EXjKM7yKP0xbTP Three years ago, Signed Distance Functions (SDFs) were implicitly a part of my solstice celebration: https://invent.fm/shows/episode-009/ This year,…
Today I needed to do something in Adobe Illustrator, which I have no idea how to use. In 1 minute I trained Cursor on the official documentation, and 15 seconds later I had 4 different approaches to how to do it! In 2 minutes and 35 seconds I can teach you how to do it too!
This post and video are dedicated to Prof. Garret Miyake . He asked me to show him how I’m using AI to accelerate my reading. There are quite a few ways I’m currently doing this, but thanks to the new Knowledge Base feature in Poe there is a very easy way to do this. In under 5 minutes, you can train a custom Poe bot to dramatically accelerate your reading! Books, articles, whatever.…
Well, after six days of a ketogenic diet and four with COVID symptoms, I can definitely say that my energy is depleted. As a card-carrying workaholic, it is an interesting opportunity to really ask myself: What is the truly essential work that I need to do? This is a question that I try to bring my attention to regularly, but there’s nothing like extremely low blood sugar and a COVID…
Hey there, it’s Raymond. Just a quick note to let you know that some of the links on this site are affiliate links. This means that if you click on one of these links and make a purchase, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend products or services that I’ve personally used or believe will add value to my readers. This includes being a participant in…
I want to treat my social media accounts as “repeaters”. They spread the word to different corners of the internet. I previously shared a bit about my automation workflow. In my current workflow, I’m using webhooks with Make.com to send posts to Buffer. This is great for LinkedIn, X/Twitter, and Facebook Pages. Unfortunately, Meta makes it pretty rough for folks to post to…
I have COVID, for the second time. It’s not fun, but I’m doing 10x better than last time. Big inflection point: Paxlovid. I got it within 24 hrs of testing positive, and it is clearly keeping everything in check. Horrible metallic taste in my mouth, but I’ll take it. I was initially very skeptical after hearing all of the stories of rebounds, but I gave it a shot after a few…
Remember the story about the McDonald’s at the top of the volcano ? Well it erupted. (…and I sincerely hope that you didn’t quit your job to make custom GPTs for a living.) A few people figured out how to trick the custom GPTs that are starting to roll out to the app store into revealing their prompt instructions. The result is hands-down the most comprehensive and high quality…
I struggle to create clear instructions for AI. I struggle to create clear instructions for humans. I struggle to create clear instructions for AI to create clear instructions for humans. But we move forwards, step by step. Try out Human Instruct Turbo today! In this video, we go behind the scenes of the creation of the revolutionary new GPT, Human Instruct Turbo. This is unedited, unplanned,…
In this video, I delve into the world of AI transcription, specifically focusing on MacWhisper , a leading tool for AI-driven voice-to-text transcription on Mac. We explore how to enhance MacWhisper with a custom glossary for accurate transcription of unique words and proper nouns, and share tips from the OpenAI Cookbook to refine your MacWhisper settings. I also demonstrate real-life application…
Today I attended Builder’s Roundtable: Generative AI for eCommerce . It was pretty good. 2x it, or, better - get your AI to watch the replay for you. There were a few interesting ideas on customizing generative AI for eCommerce. Unfortunately I think the OctoAI product still has a long way to go, I frankly was not impressed with the onboarding experience after getting amped up by this…
A brief enumeration (or perhaps perturbation) around the concept of the “Zone of Genius”: Zone of Genius Competitive Advantage The One Thing 80/20 Principle Specialization Deep Work Unique Value Proposition Leverage Strategic Focus
“Show me the incentive, and I will show you the outcome.” - Charlie Munger This weekend I’ve been thinking a lot about incentive structures. (RIP Charlie Munger) I don’t think I have any new “crispy realizations”, but here are a few related items: The Big Companies Will Never Catch Up Why small teams have a big advantage over large organizations, especially…
The pace of AI development over the last few months has been simply exhausting. Exhilarating, but exhausting. Just look at this chart. This is just the open source LLMs. I don’t check this leaderboard very often, but the Mistral models that were winning two weeks ago aren’t even in the top 20. Here’s some cool stuff I found since I ate dinner an hour ago. (Sorry, I literally…
For those that follow, you’ll know I’m currently obsessed with AI, voice to text transcription, and the intersection of AI and voice-to to text transcription. I wrote some thoughts about “the perfect voice transcription tool” - which unfortunately still doesn’t exist. But what did happen this week is that MacWhisper found a way to 3x the speed of their transcription…
I’ve been working on my AI “content machine” for polySpectra . As I wrote before, quantity is very easy, but quality is a challenge . It is very easy to output nonsense. I have been able to achieve a high throughput of “SEO-optimized nonsense”, but I have been having a hard time getting technical content that isn’t more work to edit than it would have been to…
There are three reasons why big companies are so obsessed with big data. One, there are very few people inside the company that actually have a clue about what’s really important. (Or at least a low density of people who have a clue.) Two, the people who do have a clue unfortunately have to justify every activity and expense to people who don’t have a clue. (And the people who…
Today is polySpectra’s 7th birthday. I spent the morning walking slowly, reflecting on the past seven years…and the next seven. (…As is my usual morning ritual , dictating into my Yealink BH71 Pro headset .) Here are seven reflections to celebrate seven years of polySpectra . For fun, I’ll share some of the rejected cakes that didn’t make it into the official…
I’m not always the best at making time for play. It’s very easy as an entrepreneur to have everything be about work in some way or another. Once the vision is big enough, there is no practical end. This evening I discovered something wonderful (to me): WebChuck It instantly transported me back to my days in PLOrk , where I first learned computer science, in ChucK . (I do not recommend…
Today I started thinking a lot about the fact that the 3D printing industry is “traumatized”. I am not necessarily using this word in a clinical (DSM-5) sense, but rather in the sense that the industry has been through a really hard time. It is hard to imagine more of a rock bottom. So in this analogy, under the hypothesis that the collective behavior of the industry is influenced by…
Today I noticed a new section on Purple Space for AI exploration and discussion. This part of the description had me noodling all day: “Perhaps the biggest change in work since the invention of electricity.” So if AI is electricity… …then the foundation model companies are like the utility companies. (AI had a few more ideas to fill out the obvious) …then data is…
This week we did our first AI-assisted 6 Hats exercise with 6 Hats Helper . It was way more fun than doing it alone. The helper was well-behaved, and in a few cases stated the “obvious” perspectives right away, so the team didn’t need to spend time naming them. At the end, it summarized everything for us to copy/paste as meeting notes. 6 Hats is a major decision-accelerator on…
Today I had an “Oh That’s Why It’s So Hard” moment courtesy of NIST, US taxpayers, and the Constitution. The short version of the story is that it is a pain in the ass to print on LCD resin 3D printers, and there are all these inconsistencies that arise even when you specifically “tool match” a DLP printer to have the same specs (wavelength, power density, temp,…
Sometimes you fall off the horse. I did over the last week. This time, I’m going to try to cover my tracks with gold. Gold flakes, nuggets, maybe even gold teeth. Pardon my mess
SuperAgent has recently introduced a new feature that’s worth exploring: Custom Tools . This feature allows you to create your own tools within SuperAgent, opening up a world of possibilities for data manipulation and visualization. (and literally anything you can write a function for…) One tool that caught my attention is the graph tool. It’s a powerful addition that allows you…
In my ongoing journey with AI, I’ve been experimenting with a new approach: dictating directly to AI. This method eliminates the need for additional prompting, allowing me to simply paste the transcript straight into ChatGPT. This approach has several advantages. It’s faster, as it cuts out the middle step of typing out my thoughts. It’s also more natural, as I can speak my…
I’m intrigued by this concept: “Type as fast as you can. Or paste some badly written text. I’ll rewrite the mess in a proper way.” Flow Speed Typist It’s an interesting angle on using AI to accelerate workflows. I’m not a perfect typist. I’m probably unaware of just how much time this would save. I’m particularly interested in applying this concept…
I was revisiting Curable recently. A question that really stuck out to me, which I’ve been revisiting recently: “Is this movement dangerous for me?” We our fear/danger wires get re-inforced over time, this question seems to help uncross the wires. Defusing the pain bomb, one question at a time.
I recently came across Tavily , an AI-powered platform that aims to revolutionize the way we conduct research. Tavily automates the research process, promising to deliver comprehensive, accurate, and credible research results in a matter of seconds. Tavily’s approach to research is quite impressive. You simply share what you want to research, and Tavily starts gathering information from…
My friend Keetu said something very deep recently, which I think is appropriate for Thanksgiving: “Family Is Where Things Don’t Need to Make Sense”
Sometimes you get lucky on the first try. (Don’t ask me how many times I completely struck out trying to improve this image.) Topologically Optimized Turkey 🙏 Thank you! 🙏
The big companies will never catch up. They won’t be the first to know, even if they are the first to hear. The tech scout will have a call with the business unit. This will take a few weeks to schedule. If it’s really interesting, the business unit and the tech scout will have to write a report for the leadership team. If that goes well, and assuming the CEO also sees something about…
Apologies for the delay, I’ve been walking on the edge of infinity. It has been quite consuming. I’m still practicing my discernment . Some key learnings: AI needs editing. AI is better at writing than editing. It is very easy to propagate errors to infinity. Once it works, it cranks .