Autoregressive thoughts on ML, AI, and shipping things. By Alex Furrier.https://alexfurrier.dev/https://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-07-22-frustrating-ai-code-smell/https://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-07-22-frustrating-ai-code-smell/Turning messy evidence into a clean taxonomy before it has earned one.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTpostaicodingagentshttps://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-07-19-impractical-ereader-phone/https://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-07-19-impractical-ereader-phone/Using AI to turn a $70 accessory into a literal attention shield.Sun, 19 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTpostaireadingprojectsproductivityhttps://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-07-14-ai-coding-20-prs-day/https://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-07-14-ai-coding-20-prs-day/I went from merging 3.4 personal PRs a week to 19.2. Extrapolate that another year and the math says 20 PRs a day. Yeah, right.Tue, 14 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTpostaicodingagentshttps://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-07-14-i-put-my-dog-in-my-coding-agent/https://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-07-14-i-put-my-dog-in-my-coding-agent/Pi made it easy to put a sprite version of my dog in the terminal, then bundle the small coding-agent features I wanted around it.Tue, 14 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTpostaicodingagentsprojectshttps://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-05-06-dogfooding-is-the-new-code-review/https://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-05-06-dogfooding-is-the-new-code-review/AI agents can ship code faster than humans can review it. Correct code still needs human time to become good software.Wed, 06 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTlinkaicodingagentshttps://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-05-01-update-on-codex-gremlins/https://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-05-01-update-on-codex-gremlins/OpenAI explained why Codex kept talking about goblins. Of course it was reward hacking.Fri, 01 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTpostaillmcodinghttps://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-04-29-codex-gpt-55-gremlins/https://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-04-29-codex-gpt-55-gremlins/Codex GPT-5.5 apparently needed an explicit, repeated reminder not to talk about certain creatures unless they are actually relevant.Wed, 29 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTlinkaicodingclaude-codehttps://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-04-21-the-shiny-object-trap/https://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-04-21-the-shiny-object-trap/When you can do anything, what you don't do is the skillTue, 21 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTpostaiproductivitycareerhttps://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-04-08-karpathy-llm-knowledge-base/https://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-04-08-karpathy-llm-knowledge-base/Andrej Karpathy described exactly what I've been doing for the past few months. Here's a template to get started in five minutes.Wed, 08 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTpostaitoolsproductivityclaude-codehttps://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-04-01-3-things-claude-code-source/https://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-04-01-3-things-claude-code-source/Types as agent instructions, auto-generated verifiers, and experimental REPL mode.Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTpostaiclaude-codesoftware-engineeringhttps://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-03-31-50000-buttons/https://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-03-31-50000-buttons/Software UX has been built around make it easy to do things. It's shifting towards make it easy to say what you want.Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTnoteaisoftware-engineeringhttps://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-03-30-pretext-text-reflow/https://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-03-30-pretext-text-reflow/One person and one AI built pretext in 27 days. Autoresearch applied to a real problem.Mon, 30 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTpostaiwebtoolshttps://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-03-26-agent-friendly-cli-design/https://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-03-26-agent-friendly-cli-design/10 principles for building CLIs that AI agents can actually use, from a Cursor dev. Plus the missing piece: WHEN and WHEN NOT to use each command.Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTlinkaisoftware-engineeringclihttps://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-03-25-llms-are-cowboy-coding/https://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-03-25-llms-are-cowboy-coding/Anthropic's harness engineering article highlights what's missing from most AI coding: scrutiny and evaluation.Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTlinkaicodinghttps://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-03-24-dont-rag-until-you-have-to/https://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-03-24-dont-rag-until-you-have-to/Why build a RAG pipeline when AI can already do most of the work for you?Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTnoteairagtoolshttps://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-03-23-ml-monitoring-keep-it-simple-keep-it-compounding/https://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-03-23-ml-monitoring-keep-it-simple-keep-it-compounding/You don't need drift detection to start. One dashboard, one runbook, and a process that gets a little better every time.Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTpostmachine-learningobservabilitypractitionerhttps://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-03-19-ruining-march-madness-with-ai/https://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-03-19-ruining-march-madness-with-ai/I pointed Claude at Evan Miya probabilities and Yahoo public picks and told it to build a bracket optimizer. It mostly worked, except for the part where it started picking 16-seeds.Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTpostaimarch-madnessclaude-codehttps://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-03-17-brandolinis-law-is-flipping/https://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-03-17-brandolinis-law-is-flipping/AI makes checking claims cheaper than making them. A penny-rounding simulation proves the point.Tue, 17 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTnoteaihttps://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-03-10-dont-replace-your-job-replace-your-chores/https://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-03-10-dont-replace-your-job-replace-your-chores/Automate the draining parts, focus on what gives you energyTue, 10 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTpostaiworkflowproductivityhttps://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-02-25-the-cli-is-dead/https://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-02-25-the-cli-is-dead/Agents + CLIs + skills is the core of the future - nobody has figured out the right human interface for that yetWed, 25 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTnoteaidev-toolsagentshttps://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-02-19-my-ai-dev-flow/https://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-02-19-my-ai-dev-flow/No theory, just the setup — how I actually work with AI tools day to dayThu, 19 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTnoteaidev-toolsworkflowhttps://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-02-12-agents-only-need-four-tools/https://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-02-12-agents-only-need-four-tools/Everything else is CLIs and skills filesThu, 12 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTnoteaiagentsdev-toolshttps://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-02-04-notes-on-self-hosting-llms/https://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2026-02-04-notes-on-self-hosting-llms/What to expect when running local models on consumer hardwareWed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTpostllmself-hostingmachine-learninghttps://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2025-08-05-muon-optimization-link/https://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2025-08-05-muon-optimization-link/The Muon optimization algorithm stablizes multi-million dollar GPu training run and does so on the strength of three "magic" numbersTue, 05 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMTlinkmachine-learningoptimizationgpualgorithmshttps://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2025-07-30-how-claude-code-actually-uses-claudemd-files/https://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2025-07-30-how-claude-code-actually-uses-claudemd-files/Discovered that CLAUDE.md files get passed to Claude with a disclaimer that they might not be relevant - explains why project instructions sometimes get ignoredWed, 30 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMTlinkclaude-codeai-toolsdocumentationworkflowhttps://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2025-07-12-homelab-update-paternity-leave-edition/https://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2025-07-12-homelab-update-paternity-leave-edition/Five years of accumulated homelab jank finally gets some love during paternity leaveSat, 12 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMTposthomelabdockerself-hostinginfrastructurehttps://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2025-02-10-firecrawl-scraper-script/https://alexfurrier.dev/blog/2025-02-10-firecrawl-scraper-script/A command-line utility for scraping web content through the Firecrawl API with automatic file naming and content cleaningMon, 10 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMTnotepythonscriptingweb-scrapinguv