Cole McIntosh

AI Engineer

Blog

Thoughts on AI, engineering, and building the future.

Why Open-Weight Models Matter for AI Independence

Why owning open-weight models protects builders from account bans, rate limits, and centralized policy shifts that can kneecap innovation overnight.

The Anti-Slop Backlash: Keep Thinking in a Synthetic Sludge Age

A call to resist automated brain rot, expose the hollow economics of generative visuals, and double down on language-first tools that sharpen judgment.

Why Agentic Search is Replacing Traditional RAG

The AI landscape is witnessing a fundamental shift from static retrieval-augmented generation to dynamic, intelligent search systems. Discover why agentic search represents the future of AI-powered information retrieval.

Why AI Agents Signal the End of Click-Based Computing

How modern AI agents herald a fundamental shift from traditional graphical interfaces to conversational, intent-based interactions that will reshape how we interact with computers.

How Large Language Models Think and Learn

A deep dive into the fascinating mechanisms that enable LLMs to process information, reason, and generate responses - from extended context and in-context learning to the architecture of thought.

The Next Generation of AI Coding Assistants

A comprehensive look at Anthropic's announcement of Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4, featuring revolutionary advances in coding capabilities, extended thinking with tool use, and the general availability of Claude Code.

Connecting LLMs to Your Data

A deep dive into Model Context Protocol resources - how they enable LLMs to access external data sources while maintaining application control.

Building the Future of Interactive AI Systems

An in-depth exploration of OpenAI's Agents SDK, its key features, and how it's revolutionizing the development of autonomous AI systems.

MCP and Cursor

Extending AI capabilities with Model Context Protocol, a powerful open standard for connecting Cursor to external tools and data sources.

Chain of Thought Reranking

A technique to optimize LLM responses by extracting and refining their internal reasoning chains.

Building langchain-salesforce

A journey in creating a seamless integration between LangChain's powerful LLM framework and Salesforce's robust CRM platform.

Entropy-Based Chain of Thought Injection

A technique to optimize LLM responses by extracting and refining their internal reasoning chains.

NumPy MCP Server

Building a Model Context Protocol server for numerical computations with NumPy, enabling LLMs to perform mathematical operations.

Building Halcyon-1B: A Creative Writing Model

A venture into developing a specialized language model for creative writing, built on Gemma-3B and fine-tuned for storytelling and narrative construction.