Field notes

Notes from the data layer.

Essays and analysis on the foundations that make agentic platforms actually work. Written by operators — not hype merchants.

Latest — Perspective

August 1, 20267 min read

Where to Start With Agentic AI: A 90-Day Plan

Most agentic projects die between demo and production. A 90-day sequence — audit, foundation, one narrow agent — beats a year of pilots.

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Deep Dive

August 1, 20268 min read

Is Your Data Ready for AI Agents? 10 Questions

Before you scope an agent, score your data estate. Ten questions that predict whether an agentic project ships or stalls.

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Perspective

August 1, 20267 min read

Your First AI Agent: Pick the Right Use Case

The first agent should be narrow, measurable, and close to clean data. A filter for choosing — and the use cases to avoid.

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Deep Dive

July 11, 20266 min read

Agents Aren't the Hard Part. Your Data Is.

Most firms fail at agents for the same reason they failed at analytics: the data underneath is siloed, unprocessed, or ungoverned. The fix is engineering — not another model demo.

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News

July 11, 20266 min read

ChatGPT Work Ships: OpenAI's Agent for the Office

OpenAI launched ChatGPT Work on GPT-5.6 — an agent that runs multi-step work across enterprise apps for hours. Data readiness is now the gating factor.

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News

July 11, 20266 min read

Data Platforms Are Now Agent Platforms

Databricks reports 100,000+ agents and a quadrillion tokens a year; Snowflake is buying Natoma for agent governance. The control-plane race is on.

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News

July 11, 20266 min read

EU AI Act: Delay Is Real, but August 2 Still Bites

The Digital Omnibus pushed high-risk AI rules to 2027 — but Article 50 transparency duties and GPAI penalties still land on August 2, 2026.

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Deep Dive

July 11, 20267 min read

What It Takes to Ship a Production Invoice Agent

Seven months of agent tuning produced mediocre results. One month of data engineering plus a two-week build outperformed it. A deep dive on the sequence.

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Deep Dive

July 11, 20268 min read

What AI Agent Development Consulting Includes

Readiness, platform build, and ops — what serious agent consulting covers, and when buying agents is the wrong move.

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News

July 10, 20262 min read

Field Notes Is Live

We're publishing operator essays on data foundations and agentic platforms — starting with why agents fail when the data underneath isn't ready.

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Topic deep dives

The foundations behind the field notes.

Pillar hubs — longer context on the layers agents depend on.

Agentic platforms

Agent workflows that ship because the data layer can support them — not demos that stall in production.

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Data foundations

Unified sources of truth, processed datasets, and governance — the substrate agentic platforms depend on.

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Enterprise AI readiness

How to tell whether your data estate can support continuous agent deployment — before another model demo.

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