Notes from the studio.
Engineering notes on AI, Alexa skills, chatbots and the messy bits of shipping production software.
How to Get Started With Alexa Skill Development and Build Your First Skill
Most first Alexa skills die in the developer console. A practical walkthrough of skill types, interaction models, AWS Lambda hosting, and certification.
An AI Agent on WhatsApp: Real Answers, Real Actions, Not a Button Menu
A WhatsApp AI agent reads messages in your customer's own words, answers from your own data, and takes real actions like checking an order or booking a slot, then hands off cleanly to a human.
Aisha Rahman · June 16, 2026 · 5 min read
If Your Radio Station Is Not an Alexa Skill, You Are Losing Listeners Every Day
Millions of homes now ask Alexa to play the radio by voice. If your station is not published as its own skill, Alexa plays nothing, plays a competitor, or plays the wrong thing.
Lena Petrov · June 12, 2026 · 6 min read
The Hidden Cost of Not Having a Branded Alexa Skill
When a customer asks Alexa for your brand and nothing answers, you are invisible at the exact moment they want you. Here is what that silence actually costs.
Lena Petrov · June 9, 2026 · 5 min read
Your Podcast Has a Hidden Audience on Alexa
There is a daily listening audience on Echo devices your analytics will never show you. If you are not on Alexa, you are not reaching them. Here is how to fix that.
Lena Petrov · June 5, 2026 · 5 min read
What an Alexa Skill Actually Costs (and What You Lose Without One)
A straight cost breakdown of building and running an Alexa skill, the customers you forfeit by sitting it out, and a simple way to decide if it pays off.
Lena Petrov · June 2, 2026 · 5 min read
What AI Agents Can Actually Do for Your Business in 2026
AI agents are real, useful, and easy to oversell. Here is a plain English look at what they do well today, where they still need a human, and how to start.
Aarav Patel · May 28, 2026 · 5 min read
Cut Your LLM Bill Without Cutting Quality
A practical, ordered playbook for lowering production LLM costs. Prompt hygiene, caching, model routing, retrieval, budgets, and the measurement that ties it all together.
Aarav Patel · May 22, 2026 · 5 min read
Do You Actually Need Custom AI, or Is an Off the Shelf Tool Enough?
A straight, vendor neutral answer to the question every founder is asking right now. Most teams do not need custom AI yet. Here is how to tell when you do.
Aarav Patel · May 18, 2026 · 5 min read
The Flash Briefing: The Morning Habit Slot Most Businesses Skip
Alexa Flash Briefings put your brand in someone's morning routine. They're recurring, low friction, and habit forming. Here is how to use the slot well.
Lena Petrov · May 15, 2026 · 6 min read
How to Build a RAG Assistant That Actually Answers From Your Company Docs
A practical guide to building an AI assistant grounded in your own handbook, policies, and support history, plus the failure modes to avoid.
Aarav Patel · May 12, 2026 · 6 min read
Building Neutral AI: How We Ship Production Systems Without the Hype
Hype free engineering principles for AI products that serve users, not nudge them. Grounding, refusal, evals, cost bounding, the boring decisions that actually ship.
Aarav Patel · May 10, 2026 · 4 min read
AI Development in 2026: When to Use RAG, Fine Tuning, or Just Better Prompts
A practical AI development guide. When retrieval works better than fine tuning. When prompt engineering wins. And the cost equation most teams skip.
Aarav Patel · May 9, 2026 · 5 min read
Custom App MVP Development: What 4 Weeks Actually Buys You
What you can realistically ship in a 4 week custom app MVP, features, tradeoffs, and the timeline traps that kill startups.
Hina Suzuki · May 8, 2026 · 5 min read
Customer Support on WhatsApp, Done Right
WhatsApp is where many of your customers already live. Here is how to build a support bot that actually helps, knows its limits, and hands off to humans cleanly.
Aisha Rahman · May 8, 2026 · 6 min read
Alexa Skill Development: A Production Guide for 2026
How to build an Alexa skill that gets certified and used. Voice UX rules, AWS Lambda backend, Echo Show with a screen, and the metrics that decide if people come back.
Lena Petrov · May 7, 2026 · 6 min read
Machine Learning in Production: Beyond the Jupyter Notebook
A working model is not a working product. The full production ML stack, data pipelines, deployment patterns, monitoring, and drift detection.
Marco Rossi · May 6, 2026 · 5 min read
Chatbot Development: Why Most Bots Fail (and How to Build One That Does Not)
The chatbot engineering decisions that decide success, log driven intent design, the human handoff feature, channel specific behavior, and metrics that matter.
Aisha Rahman · May 5, 2026 · 6 min read