AI
#ai
AI — currently my most active learning area. The notes here are mostly about LLMs, agents, and the glue that turns static models into useful systems. For a personal account of how I got here, see My AI journey.
Core concepts
- LLM — large language models, the substrate.
- AI agent — model + tools + control loop.
- Embedding — numeric representation of meaning.
- Reasoning — the thinking-token phenomenon in recent models.
Agent architectures and decision loops
- Multi-agent — multiple agents collaborating.
- Plan and act — separating planning from execution.
- Sequential thinking — forcing step-by-step reasoning.
- OODA, SOAR, system thinking — classical decision and cognitive frameworks that inform agent design.
RAG and retrieval
- RAG — retrieval-augmented generation, the pattern.
- Chunking — splitting documents before indexing.
- Unstructured-io — pre-processing messy inputs.
- Vector stores: Pinecone, Qdrant.
Frameworks
- LangChain, LangGraph, LangSmith — the LangChain family.
- LlamaIndex — focused on data/retrieval.
Agent protocols and tooling
- MCP — the protocol for exposing tools to agents.
- Cursor — my daily AI-native IDE. See the full Cursor MOC.
- Playwright MCP — browser automation as a tool.
Case studies
- Building an MCP app — draft on a recent MCP server/app project.
- One main agent per product — why I keep a single lead agent per project.
- Cursor MCP env vars — four ways to pass secrets to MCP servers.
- Playwright MCP with persistent session — keeping logged-in state across runs.
- OpenAPI → MCP → blog post — a content generation pipeline.