an engineer's home.

Building a Local-First Agent Framework in Rust (Part 9): Failing Gracefully With Recovery

See Part 0 for the latest table of contents and sample code. New chapters will be added over time. Chapter 9: Failing Gracefully With Recovery Chapter 8 gave abcb a loop. The framework could create a session, send it to the provider, parse the model's structured output, execute

Building a Local-First Agent Framework in Rust (Part 8): The Agent Loop and Session Continuity

See Part 0 for the latest table of contents and sample code. New chapters will be added over time. Chapter 8: The Agent Loop and Session Continuity Chapter 7 gave abcb one clean step. The framework could ask the provider for one assistant message, parse that message as ModelOutput, and

Building a Local-First Agent Framework in Rust (Part 7): The Model's Envelope and One Step

See Part 0 for the latest table of contents and sample code. New chapters will be added over time. Chapter 7: The Model's Envelope and One Step Chapter 6 gave abcb a set of capabilities. A tool can have a name, a description, and an implementation. The framework

Building a Local-First Agent Framework in Rust (Part 6): Tools and the Registry

See Part 0 for the latest table of contents and sample code. New chapters will be added over time. Chapter 6: Tools and the Registry Chapter 5 gave abcb a way to record what happened. That was not a feature that made the model smarter, but it changed the framework&

Building a Local-First Agent Framework in Rust (Part 5): Recording What Happened With an Event Log

See Part 0 for the latest table of contents and sample code. New chapters will be added over time. Chapter 5: Recording What Happened With an Event Log At the end of the previous chapter, abcb could run one mocked model turn. A user message went into a temporary session,

Building a Local-First Agent Framework in Rust (Part 4): The Provider Trait and a Scripted Mock

See Part 0 for the latest table of contents and sample code. New chapters will be added over time. Chapter 4: The Provider Trait and a Scripted Mock The previous chapter gave abcb a conversation shape. We now have Role, Message, and Session, and those types can leave memory as

Building a Local-First Agent Framework in Rust (Part 3): Modeling Messages, Roles, and Sessions

See Part 0 for the latest table of contents and sample code. New chapters will be added over time. Chapter 3: Modeling Messages, Roles, and Sessions The previous chapter gave abcb a place to live. This chapter gives it the first thing an agent framework actually needs: a conversation. That

Building a Local-First Agent Framework in Rust (Part 2): Setting Up the Workspace

See Part 0 for the latest table of contents and sample code. New chapters will be added over time. Chapter 2: Setting Up the Workspace The first code chapter does not call a model. It does not parse a tool request. It does not know what an agent loop is

Building a Local-First Agent Framework in Rust (Part 1): Introduction

See Part 0 for the latest table of contents and sample code. New chapters will be added over time. Introduction: Building the Loop The word "agent" is already overloaded enough that it can hide more than it explains. Sometimes it means a chatbot with tools. Sometimes it means

Building a Local-First Agent Framework in Rust (Part 0): Preface

Table of Contents * Chapter 0: Preface: Why I Am Building This * Chapter 1: Introduction: Building the Loop * Chapter 2: Setting Up the Workspace * Chapter 3: Modeling Messages, Roles, and Sessions * Chapter 4: The Provider Trait and a Scripted Mock * Chapter 5: Recording What Happened With an Event Log * Chapter 6:

Joanna Stern at the Computer History Museum

Last Tuesday night (5/19), I went to the Computer History Museum to hear Joanna Stern talk about her new book, I Am Not a Robot: My Year of Using AI to Do (Almost) Everything. This was one of those Bay Area events that felt almost too easy to attend.

BTS World Tour Arirang at Stanford, Day 2

Not long after K-Pop Fireworks Night at Oracle Park, the real K-pop moment came much closer to my home. BTS came to Palo Alto. Technically, the venue was Stanford Stadium, not Palo Alto, and technically this was part of the BTS World Tour Arirang. But from our side