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~/articles · 110 PIECES

Articles, one at a time.

Every piece cites primary sources and adds something you can act on: a worked example, a tested command, a documented limitation. Drafts that only summarize what already exists stay unpublished.
AI INFRASTRUCTURE 2026-08-03 ·Effloow Editorial

Instrument Multi-Step Agents with OpenTelemetry GenAI Conventions: Tracing That Survives Production

A practical guide to instrumenting multi-step LLM agents with the OpenTelemetry GenAI semantic conventions, so a 2 AM failure becomes a readable trace instead of a support ticket. Includes a runnable local demo with no paid API keys.
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AI INFRASTRUCTURE 2026-08-02 ·Effloow Editorial

Your Next MCP Server Could Be the Breach: A Supply-Chain Vetting and Quarantine Pipeline for Third-Party Tool Servers

A practical vetting and quarantine pipeline for third-party MCP servers: scan install scripts, verify provenance, and run candidates in a secret-free sandbox before they ever touch your agent stack.
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AI INFRASTRUCTURE 2026-08-01 ·Effloow Editorial

MCP Tool Poisoning Is Now an OWASP-Listed Attack: Build a Description-Hygiene and Provenance Auditor for Your MCP Servers

MCP tool poisoning — hidden instructions in tool descriptions that hijack agents — is now an OWASP-listed attack. Build a fully local description-hygiene and provenance auditor you can hand to enterprise security reviewers.
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AI INFRASTRUCTURE 2026-07-29 ·Effloow Editorial

OpenAI Spend Limits Return 429: Your Retry Logic Will Make It Worse

OpenAI hard spend limits reject requests with a 429. Lab evidence on why default client retries treat it as a temporary blip, and the one-line fix.
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AI INFRASTRUCTURE 2026-07-27 ·Effloow Editorial

Your AI Gateway Blocked the Request. Did You Still Pay?

We measured what OpenRouter returns when a request is refused, and whether refused calls still cost money. Ten blocked calls moved the bill by $0.00.
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AI DEVELOPMENT 2026-07-24 ·Effloow Editorial

OpenAI Output Moderation: What the Scores Actually Catch

We asked an AI assistant for a threatening collection letter. It wrote one. Output moderation scored it 0.00008 and let it through. Here is what that means.
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AI INFRASTRUCTURE 2026-07-20 ·Effloow Editorial

GPT-5.6 Prompt Caching: The 24-Hour Cache Is Gone

GPT-5.6 added explicit prompt cache controls and quietly took the 24-hour cache away. We ran the API and measured what that swap costs.
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AI DEVELOPMENT 2026-07-17 ·Effloow Editorial

When an AI Agent Bungles a Tool Call, Does It Fix Itself?

We ran an OpenAI API probe on three tool-misuse faults an order agent hits (schema drift, rate limits, fake-success replies) and recorded the recovery.
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AI DEVELOPMENT 2026-07-15 ·Effloow Editorial

GPT-5.6 Programmatic Tool Calling: When It Cuts the Token Bill

We ran GPT-5.6's programmatic tool calling on a real API. On one task it cut tokens 92%. On another it cost 2.2x more. Here's the rule that decides which.
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AI TOOLS 2026-07-14 ·Effloow Editorial

Framer Review 2026: AI Website Builder Guide

Framer review for 2026: AI site generation, CMS limits, current pricing, code components, and how it compares to Webflow, Squarespace, Wix, and WordPress.
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AI DEVELOPMENT 2026-07-13 ·Effloow Editorial

Claude Programmatic Tool Calling: Measured Token Savings

Claude can run your tools from sandbox code so big results never hit its context. We measured what that saves on a real API: 98% fewer tokens on one task.
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AI INFRASTRUCTURE 2026-07-10 ·Effloow Editorial

Web-Search Agents Waste Tokens: We Measured How Much

AI agents that browse the web re-pay for every result they read. We measured the input-token cost of context bloat on OpenAI's API: 3x on a single step.
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