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Notes from the workshop.
Essays on building bespoke software, the Elixir ecosystem, and why most companies need fewer engineers than they think.
116,000 Papers on Leftover Tokens
The Winnow Research Atlas holds 116,439 papers. Its pipeline runs by hand off my laptop. What that taught me about deterministic filters and materialized views.
The Frontier Comes to You
You will never catch the AI frontier. You don't have to. The efficiency of these models doubles every eight months, and last year's frontier keeps landing on your desk. The weights are everything.
What Is a Token Worth?
Tokens are the raw material of my work, but a subscription never tells me what one is actually worth. I'm instrumenting my own plan to find out, and to see whether the line is quietly moving.
Who the Data Centers Are For
In three weeks of June, the AI frontier stopped pretending. The most capable model went to institutions, the public got a smaller window, and the bill keeps landing on us. Here's what I'm doing about it.
Renting the Frontier
What does it cost to run your own AI coding model? I did the math. Cost is not the problem. The real risk is depending on a few vendors you can't control.
Stop Burning Tokens. Start Allocating Them.
The cheap-token era is ending, but the limit that stops you is the window, not the price. Here's how to treat AI capacity like a budget you allocate.
I Built a Video Game. The Domain Wasn't the Constraint.
Domain expertise used to be the moat. It isn't anymore. The three skills that replaced it, tested against a domain I had never worked in.
How to Tell If You're Using AI Well
Volume metrics lie about AI-assisted work. The signal isn't in the code, it's in whether you did the thinking before the code got written.
You're the Broker, Not the Builder
AI coding assistants are good enough to do the building. Your job is to be the broker between the problem and a scalable, resilient solution. Here's what that looks like in practice.
The Age of Bespoke Software
Software used to be something only tech companies could justify building. That's not true anymore. If you run a business and haven't talked through which problems are solvable with software, now is the time.
Builders Build for Fun. That's How You Get Hired.
How building Winnow Labs' blog and research atlas as a passion project turned into a real partnership, and why the best thing you can do between jobs is build something.
Amazon Buys Rivr. I've Seen This Before
A former Amazon robotics engineer breaks down why the Rivr acquisition faces the same cost and scale challenges that every robotics effort at Amazon eventually hits.
You Probably Don't Need GraphQL (Yet)
Most Phoenix apps don't need GraphQL. Here's how to know when PostgreSQL and Ecto are enough, and when Absinthe actually earns its complexity.
Elixir Was Built for Agentic AI (40 Years Early)
Erlang was designed for isolated processes with their own state, communicating over unreliable networks. That's exactly what agentic AI looks like.
Build Allies, Not Headcount
Engineering is a partnership, not a transaction. The companies that move fastest are the ones whose engineers actually understand the business.
Why I Build Everything in Elixir and Phoenix
From MVP to millions of users, Elixir and Phoenix handle it all. In the age of AI, that flexibility matters more than ever.
I Was Wrong About AI
For a year I said AI tools only added 20% efficiency. I was measuring the wrong thing.
Why I Started Kerrberry Systems
After 8 years building software at companies like Amazon and GridPoint, I'm starting something new.
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