Category: AI & Agents

2026-09-10 • Alex Merced

Agentic Data Architecture

A six-layer reference architecture for agents on company data: planners, tool boundaries, identity, the semantic layer, ...

2026-09-10 • Alex Merced

Context Engineering for Data Agents

Why text-to-SQL accuracy collapses on enterprise schemas, the five kinds of context an agent needs, where each one hides...

2026-08-25 • Alex Merced

Securing the Agentic Lakehouse Gateway: Preventing Prompt Injection and Data Exfiltration

Agentic lakehouse gateways face prompt injection and exfiltration through query results. A threat model and defenses for...

2026-08-25 • Alex Merced

Metric Contracts in Code: Testing, Versioning, and Serving Business Logic to Multi-Agent Systems

Metric contracts in code let teams test, version, and serve business logic to multi-agent systems without each agent inv...

2026-08-24 • Alex Merced

The Agent Is Now a Named Coworker, and It Needs a File Format

Named, persistent agents need a file format. Open Agent Profile, Buzz, Grok Bot, and Hermes Bot Mode show why a portable...

2026-08-24 • Alex Merced

Your Agent Should Answer the Phone: A Field Guide to AI Gateways on Slack, Discord, Telegram, Signal, and Teams

A field guide to AI gateways on Slack, Discord, Telegram, Signal, and Teams: architecture, auth, cost, and the failure m...

2026-08-24 • Alex Merced

Graphs in AI Engineering Have Solved Three Problems. The Fourth Is the Plan.

Knowledge graphs, GraphRAG, and LangGraph solved three problems. The fourth is the work itself: a reviewable graph of bo...

2026-08-19 • Alex Merced

The Five Layers of an Agentic Lakehouse

The five layers of an agentic lakehouse: Storage, Catalog, Semantic, Gateway, and Agent Surface, and how one question tr...

2026-08-19 • Alex Merced

Goal-Directed Data Quality Agents: Anomaly Quarantine on Apache Iceberg

Goal-directed data quality agents that watch Apache Iceberg tables, detect anomalies, and quarantine suspect data safely...

2026-08-19 • Alex Merced

Managing the TCO of Agentic Analytics: Token Budgets, Query Throttles, and the Economics of Autonomy

Managing the total cost of agentic analytics: token budgets, query throttles, unit economics, and the FinOps discipline ...

2026-08-19 • Alex Merced

Metric Contracts in 2026: Standardizing Business Logic Across Multi-Agent Frameworks

Metric contracts in 2026: versioned, testable definitions of business logic that let multi-agent frameworks compute reve...

2026-08-19 • Alex Merced

Query Routing at Machine Scale: Multi-Engine Workload Distribution for the Agentic Lakehouse

Query routing at machine scale for the agentic lakehouse: engine selection, acceleration substitution, admission control...

2026-08-19 • Alex Merced

Building Stateless AI Tool Gateways with FastMCP, the 2026 MCP Spec, and Kubernetes

How to build stateless AI tool gateways with FastMCP, the 2026 MCP specification, and Kubernetes, and why statelessness ...

2026-08-10 • Alex Merced

The Plan and the Worker: Two Open Specifications for Agent Harnesses

Two open specifications, the Agentic Graph Specification and the Open Agent Profile, turn agent plans and agent identity...

2026-08-04 • Alex Merced

Budgeting for Agentic Analytics When Every Question Costs Something Different

Budgeting for agentic analytics when every question costs something different: token economics, query economics, instrum...

2026-08-04 • Alex Merced

The Five Layers of an Agentic Lakehouse and Where the MCP Server Sits

The five layers of an agentic lakehouse and where the MCP server sits: storage, catalog, semantic layer, MCP gateway, an...

2026-08-04 • Alex Merced

Wiring Analytical Queries to Transactional APIs in Closed-Loop Decision Agents

Wiring analytical queries to transactional APIs in closed-loop decision agents: conditional writes, sagas with compensat...

2026-08-04 • Alex Merced

Why Agentic AI Needs a Governed Semantic Layer Behind the Model Context Protocol

Why agentic AI needs a governed semantic layer behind the Model Context Protocol: metric consistency, access control, Ap...

2026-08-04 • Alex Merced

Moving From Supply Chain Dashboards to Decision Loops With the Model Context Protocol

Moving from supply chain dashboards to decision loops with MCP: sense, decide, act, and verify, with typed action tools,...

2026-08-04 • Alex Merced

Metric Contracts as the Interface AI Agents Actually Need

Metric contracts as the interface AI agents need: calculation, inclusion rules, grain, temporal semantics, ownership, se...

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