Short Reads.
Principles and dispatches. Pointed pieces you can finish in a minute.
License Hygiene for Patent-Sensitive AI Projects
> Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. Nothing in this post is legal advice. The analysis below describes what license texts actually say - their plain language and the patent implications that follow from it. For any real IP decision, consult a qualified patent attorney.
A Prior-Art Discipline for IP-Sensitive Builders: Reading Competitors' Code Safely
A prior-art discipline is what lets you read competitors' open-source code without poisoning your own patent position. If you're building something patentable and you're active in open-source, you need a workflow for engaging with prior art that isn't "read everything" or "avoid everything." Both extremes will hurt you. The fix is an engineering workflow: a prior-art ledger, a license gate, and…
Reliable AI Agent Control Flow: Keep the State Machine Out of the Prompt
Reliable agent control flow starts with a simple boundary: the state machine that governs which step runs next belongs in code, not in a prompt. The trend of embedding state machines inside LLM system prompts is a category error. State machines are deterministic by definition. LLMs are not. Putting safety-critical control flow inside an LLM's instruction-following behavior is putting…