Notes on AI, teaching and building products — by Usama Shahid.https://reachusama.com/enhttps://reachusama.com/writing/scout-an-agent-that-decides-where-to-look/https://reachusama.com/writing/scout-an-agent-that-decides-where-to-look/AI agents explained from first principles — tool calling, the decide-act-observe loop, and knowing when to stop — through a real research agent that chooses between arXiv and Wikipedia and answers with sources.Tue, 21 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTAIagentsbuildinghttps://reachusama.com/writing/the-writing-bed-answering-from-my-own-words/https://reachusama.com/writing/the-writing-bed-answering-from-my-own-words/Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) explained from scratch — embeddings, chunking, vector similarity search and grounded answers with sources — built through a real tool that answers questions straight from my blog posts.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTAIRAGbuildinghttps://reachusama.com/writing/growing-sprout-a-guide-that-knows-its-limits/https://reachusama.com/writing/growing-sprout-a-guide-that-knows-its-limits/How to build an LLM chatbot that stays accurate: a from-first-principles look at system prompts, grounding, streaming and guardrails — and why the hard part isn't making a model talk, but making it refuse.Sun, 19 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTAILLMsbuildinghttps://reachusama.com/writing/rebuilding-usamas-corner-of-the-internet/https://reachusama.com/writing/rebuilding-usamas-corner-of-the-internet/Why I retired my old FastAPI portfolio for a static site with a proper brand — and what 'helping people and products grow' means as a design brief.Wed, 15 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTmetadesign