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Assorted updates and insights from the LJ team.

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A watercolor illustration of a classic curbside mailbox on a wooden post with its red flag raised

Cold Email Is Spam

Give the Model a Tool, Not a Rule

The $effect Trap: Why Svelte's Escape Hatch Gets Overused

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Why We Switched from Google Analytics to Plausible

A vintage illustration of a small boy in a top hat, red bow tie, and red suspendered shorts pointing a commanding finger at an attentive rabbit standing on its hind legs

The Error Message Didn't Matter

A watercolor painting of a golden labrador lying down with a pink ball in its mouth, looking up at the viewer

It Asked About Things It Already Knew

A watercolor painting of a cream vintage typewriter with wildflowers tucked behind the platen

The Twenty-First Note: How Three Neutral Components Compose into Silent Data Loss in LLM Memos

A watercolor painting of a green parrot perched on a branch, beak open mid-phrase

Repeating the Goal Doesn't Make It Yours

A watercolor painting of a blank wooden signpost with arrow points on both ends, pointing two directions at once

Only the Frontier Knows When to Ask

A watercolor painting of a mint green bicycle with a front basket, no training wheels in sight, on a cream background

The Frontier Doesn't Need the Training Wheels (We Re-Ran Everything to Find Out)

A watercolor painting of a large soft blue question mark on a cream background

The Model Always Knew What It Couldn't See

A watercolor painting of a frosted donut

The Arcade Game With No Game Loop

A watercolor painting of an elephant in a green-and-white striped referee's jersey holding a soccer ball, on a cream background

Stronger LLMs Follow Conflicting Instructions More Literally, Not Less

A watercolor painting of a calculator

The Number That Doesn't Fit in a Number: What a Kindergartner's Question Taught Us About Types

A watercolor painting of a rabbit in a plaid scarf and coat making an announcement through a red megaphone, on a cream background

Undo That: The One-Line Echo That Replaces a Transcript

A watercolor painting of an open, well-worn journal with handwritten pages and a ribbon bookmark, on a cream background

Hand It Everything It Needs: 23 Pre-Registered Studies on LLM Document Editing

A watercolor painting of a baby grand piano

The Browser Is an Instrument: Building a Playable Synth with the Web Audio API

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F♯ Is Not G♭: Music Theory as a Data-Modeling Problem

A watercolor painting of a cream French bulldog fast asleep on its side, on a pale background

Who Writes the Memo? Auditing the Safety Net We Shipped

A watercolor illustration of a stern rabbit judge in a Victorian suit and cravat, one finger raised, presiding over a handwritten document

Views Carry Values, Memos Carry Goals: Our First Judge-Graded Study

A vintage-style illustration of a young girl in a red pinafore dress leaning forward to talk face to face with a large white goose, on a cream background

The Two Things Your Agent Can't See: Memos and Mentioned Nodes

A watercolor painting of an antique brass pocket watch with Roman numerals and a small seconds dial, on a cream background

The Thirty-Sixth Edit: Long LLM Sessions Don't Need Memory Either

A watercolor painting of a scruffy brown terrier sitting in profile on a cream background, ears up, looking upward attentively

barkup 0.5: Your Code Finds the Targets Now

A watercolor painting of a crocodile schoolmaster in a green flat cap, green coat, and red tie, standing upright and reading aloud from an open book held in both claws

Your Agent Doesn't Need a Memory: Two Worked Examples Replace Session History

A watercolor painting of a happy corgi wearing a black bow tie, mouth open and tongue out, facing the viewer A watercolor painting of a beagle dressed as a detective in a deerstalker cap, tan trench coat, and green tie, standing upright and holding a magnifying glass

Then We Found the Cheap Part: One Search Call Grounds LLM Tree Edits

A watercolor painting of a bundle of cinnamon bark sticks tied with a ribbon

The Untested Half of Your WYSIWYG

A watercolor painting of an ancient figure with a long flowing white beard crouching with knees drawn up and eyes closed, painted in warm earth tones

We Tried to Delete the Hard Parts. The Benchmark Said No.

A watercolor painting of a bonsai tree with a gnarled, twisting trunk in a weathered rectangular pot

Stable IDs Are All You Need: Seven Studies on Letting LLMs Edit Trees

A watercolor painting of a pug puppy sitting and looking at the viewer

barkup 0.3: Focused Views, or Why the Model Doesn't Need to See Your Tree

A watercolor painting of a girl looking through the eyepieces of a large optical instrument

Your Agent's Session Is Drifting (and the Fix Is Cheaper Than the Bug)

A watercolor painting of a blindfolded Lady Justice holding a sword and a set of scales

The Model Doesn't Need to See Your Tree

A watercolor painting of an arched stone footbridge with wrought-iron railings and steps

We Found the Crossover (It Wasn't Where Anyone Looked)

A watercolor painting of a revolver tied with a pink gingham bow

A Deprecated Accessor That Still Typechecks Broke My Benchmark (and Maybe Your Agent)

A watercolor painting of a terrier puppy

barkup 0.2: We Shipped What the Benchmark Told Us

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We Benchmarked It: What Held Up in 'HTML as a Native Data Format for LLMs', and What Didn't

A vintage illustration of a girl writing at a wooden desk

Content Is an Overlay: Separating Words from Structure in an AI Document Editor

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Why We Moved Our Document Production into Web Code: The Origin of Replicator

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If the Solution Is Not Beautiful, It Is Wrong: Twenty-Five Years of Lightning Jar

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HTML as a Native Data Format for LLMs: Why We Encode Our Data in Markup Instead of JSON

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Utility CSS for Markup That Doesn't Exist Yet

A watercolor painting of a sea turtle with a shell of wildflowers

Migrating a Decade-Old Pimcore Site to OpenDXP on Rootless Podman and Caddy

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Pimcore or OpenDXP: A Fork in the Road for Long-Tenured DXP Stacks

A watercolor painting of a great white shark with botanical accents

Anatomy of a WordPress Compromise: One Abandoned Plugin, Ten Months of Warnings

A watercolor painting of a beetle on a blue wildflower vintage watercolor painting of a tree

Why Open Source Beats Proprietary Platforms for B2B Websites

SvelteKit vs WordPress side-by-side comparison of architecture and outcomes

Why SvelteKit is the Best Choice for Modern B2B Websites

Questions, Decisions & Compromises

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Why We Do Not Sell Digital Advertising

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SEO In The Age of LLMs

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Why We Left WordPress Behind

The Project Management Software Trap