PROJECT: Focus.AI Research Division
DOC. NO: RM-2025-INSIGHTS
Focus.AI Labs • Est. 2024
RESEARCH
REPORTS
We write about what we're learning. Research notes, technical deep-dives, and honest observations about AI, software development, and where things are headed.
The Data Flywheel Pattern
Build applications by dropping in data and letting AI handle parsing, structuring, and synthesis. Three case studies.
Claude Code, not Code
The real power of Claude Code isn't writing software—it's orchestrating skills for research, newsletters, browser automation, and turning one-off requests into repeatable workflows.
How I Use AI in Jan 2026
We're at the beginning of infinity. In geological time this is all happening in an instant — and 2026 might be the best year to be alive.
"You're absolutely right" and other AI warning signs
When your AI assistant starts agreeing with everything, you've hit the dumb zone. Practical techniques for managing context windows and keeping AI useful.
AI tools fail loudly where humans failed quietly
AI coding tools don't work well in messy codebases. The fix is doing what should have been done all along - and that's good for everyone.
Weekend Coding Agent: Build Your Own AI Assistant
A hands-on tutorial for building an AI coding agent from scratch. Bootstrap it with an existing agent, then use it to improve itself. Learn the core concepts of how coding agents work.
AI Engineering Summit 2025: Bash-Pilled and Building for Everyone
The models got smart. The tools got simple. The circle of who builds is expanding.
AI Engineering Code Summit 2025: Deep Dive Report
A comprehensive analysis of the state of AI engineering tools, frameworks, and best practices from the November 2025 Code Summit. Exploring cutting-edge developments in AI-assisted development, infrastructure, and production deployment strategies.
gpt5 is smarter than you are
gpt5 can choose to be so smart it's almost impossible to judge. Lets see how it does on some unanswerable questions and if it can totally replace google.
Single file swift mini-apps
swift files can be run directly without compiling and without XCode, making it easy to create native UI elements and access all of macOS's APIs. Once you see Swift as a scripting language rather than just an app language, you start wondering what other capabilities are hiding in plain sight.
Code Generation with Local Models
Small, local AI models deliver surprisingly effective results for everyday tasks. Also llama3.2 is surprisingly fast and gpt-oss is surprisingly good.
gpt-5 and gpt-oss
OpenAI’s GPT-5 launch stole headlines, but GPT-OSS quietly made local AI a lot more practical. This post covers what’s new, how to run it with Ollama or LM Studio, and why context size can change your results.
Technical Debt and the ROI Threshold
With agents now able to read and refactor code, the future cost of messy code -- and the current costs of unwritten code -- is shrinking. Code is more disposable and experimentation more rewarding.
Don't be passive aggressive with your agents
Treat your coding agents as adaptable collaborators—communicate clearly, value efficiency over endurance, match tools to your workflow, skip unnecessary formality, rethink technical debt, and document your development rules for best results.
June 2025 Coding Agent Report
A comprehensive analysis of 15 leading AI coding agents in 2025. We break down the strengths, weaknesses, and surprises from top tools, with clear winners for pros, tinkerers, and casual users alike.
Feature Development on the go
What happens when you challenge Google Jules, OpenAI Codex, and Cursor to build a PWA—using just your phone? Find out which agent delivered.
Geo-affordance
Imagine having Sherlock Holmes’ legendary eye for detail—AI now makes that possible for all of us. Is this AI changing us? It will alter our expectations and the risks of everyday digital life.
Report from Microsoft Build 2025
Microsoft is betting big on an open, agent-powered web—where protocols like MCP, A2A, and NLWeb redefine how AI and services interact. The real opportunity in AI isn’t just smarter models, but the “capability overhang” waiting to be unlocked by better reasoning and open standards.
Thoughts on gemini
Despite popular narratives about Google lagging in AI, their Gemini models reveal engineering excellence that's hard to ignore when you strip away the conservative product decisions and UI polish. From the lightweight yet powerful Gemma 3 to the multimodal capabilities of Gemini 2.5, Google's models demonstrate a level of speed, precision, and fundamental understanding that suggests they're not playing catch-up—they're just being cautious.
Schema-Driven AI: Better User Experiences with Structured Output
Transforms chatting from simple text generators into powerful data processing engines, enabling extraction of organized information from PDFs, audio files, and more. Here are some practical techniques for building, including audio analysis, pdf data extraction and conversation state management, showcasing how constraint-driven outputs can power rich user experiences.
Moral Vibe Check
Technical correctness and meaningful insight: well-formatted, detailed AI responses can mask a fundamental lack of understanding—a "raving lunatic" hidden behind impressive form. Maybe P-doom is less about malice and more of making us intellectually poorer by substituting form for substance, facts for understanding, and technical accuracy for wisdom.
Image Gen on Apple Silicon
We've got the apple silicon, lets download some models and make some pictures
Recipes big and small
The hardest thing about living in the future is that we're figuring it out as we go. Here's some notes of things to play with.
Exposing Services with MCP
Model Context Protocol bridges the gap between AI models and your applications. Learn how defining simple tools with descriptions and parameters lets Claude intelligently combine services without explicit instructions.
Agentic YOLO with Warp, Cursor, and Claude
What happens when you let AI help you think through and build your ideas, with minimal supervision and maximum trust? What does it mean to be a programmer? Are we closer or further from thought-stuff?
Clipboards are eating the world
The untold story of how your computer's clipboard sees itself as the essential bridge between humans and AI tools in the creative process. Through its eyes, we witness the journey of how digital projects come together through countless transfers between different AI services.
The New Touch Interface
The real killer apps of smartphones weren't the early games but became things like group chats and video calls that fundamentally changed how we communicate. Similarly, while we're currently amazed by AI's capabilities, we're still discovering how these tools will meaningfully integrate into our lives.
Tools for thinking. Everyday AI.
From building nuclear fusors to probing Vatican AI doctrine, this exploration reveals how AI tools are reshaping our daily intellectual work in surprisingly practical ways. Through examples of interfacing with databases, analyzing legal documents, and diving into deep research rabbit holes, we see how AI assistants are becoming intuitive research companions that expand our ability to quickly understand and synthesize complex information.
How I classify models
Small models are smart yet limited in knowledge; foundation models possess both deep understanding and extensive knowledge but lack structured problem-solving approaches. Educated models like DeepResearch excel by combining learned reasoning processes with large memory capacities, enabling them to adapt effectively to complex tasks while handling vast information instantaneously.
AI for research: DeepResearch a clear winner
Asking the tough questions: DeepResearch excels in depth and comprehensiveness, while o1, Sonnet 3.5, and DeepSeek with DeepThought provide comparable results for complex inquiries. Smaller models like phi4 and llama3.2 are deemed inadequate for intricate topics.
Learning on the go with NotebookLM
By utilizing NotebookLM, an AI model capable of generating audio summaries and interactive conversations, you can create customized podcasts on-the-go. You can also join the conversation.
Making hard things easier
Explore how generative AI-based tools can revolutionize the way we work, making creative tasks more accessible and efficient for both novices and experts, while also highlighting the importance of critical thinking and creativity in the face of automation.
Welcome to The Focus AI
Let me tell you a bit about what we do here, a personal journey from cofounding a software development company to exploring the revolutionary potential of generative AI and how it's transforming the way humans interact with knowledge and information.
Slicing up a design from figma
In this hands-on comparison, three coding tools - Cursor, Aider, and v0 - are put to the test as they attempt to replicate a design from Figma into functional HTML and CSS code, revealing their strengths, weaknesses, and quirks.
Focus.AI Research Division
Exploring the future of AI-powered software development
Subscribe to our newsletter
Ready to distill signal from noise?
Whether you're exploring possibilities or ready to build, we'd love to hear what you're working on.