Skylar PayneBuilding AI that actually works. Evaluation-driven development for engineering teams.https://skylarbpayne.com/Why Most Companies Fail to Build Strategic Assets with AIhttps://skylarbpayne.com/posts/ai-maturity-model/https://skylarbpayne.com/posts/ai-maturity-model/An AI Maturity ModelThu, 13 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMTBuilding AI Products That Actually Work: A Hard-Won Guidehttps://skylarbpayne.com/posts/ai-product/https://skylarbpayne.com/posts/ai-product/Wed, 08 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMTThe Answer is Always Evalshttps://skylarbpayne.com/posts/answer-always-evals/https://skylarbpayne.com/posts/answer-always-evals/Thu, 31 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMTArtificial Intelligence for Businesshttps://skylarbpayne.com/posts/ai-for-business/https://skylarbpayne.com/posts/ai-for-business/A Strategic Guide to SuccessMon, 25 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMTPatterns for AI Reliabilityhttps://skylarbpayne.com/posts/ai-reliability-patterns/https://skylarbpayne.com/posts/ai-reliability-patterns/Tue, 26 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMTFinding True Northhttps://skylarbpayne.com/posts/data-driven-case-study-1/https://skylarbpayne.com/posts/data-driven-case-study-1/How LinkedIn''s Candidate Recommendation Project Changed My View of Data-Driven DevelopmentMon, 18 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMTBringing Data Science Back to AI Engineeringhttps://skylarbpayne.com/posts/bringing-data-science-back-to-ai-engineering/https://skylarbpayne.com/posts/bringing-data-science-back-to-ai-engineering/Thu, 27 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTData is Wickedhttps://skylarbpayne.com/posts/data-is-wicked/https://skylarbpayne.com/posts/data-is-wicked/Fri, 30 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT40% Better, 75% Fasterhttps://skylarbpayne.com/posts/frigade-ai-better-faster/https://skylarbpayne.com/posts/frigade-ai-better-faster/How Frigade Slashed Latency & Boosted User HelpfulnessTue, 20 May 2025 00:00:00 GMTFrom AI Ambitions to Action: A Mental Health Startuphttps://skylarbpayne.com/posts/healthrhythms-mood-score/https://skylarbpayne.com/posts/healthrhythms-mood-score/How HealthRhythms built their mood score systemThu, 10 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMTThe Real Secret to Landing Your Dream Tech Jobhttps://skylarbpayne.com/posts/job-search-secrets/https://skylarbpayne.com/posts/job-search-secrets/It''s Not What You ThinkTue, 07 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMTThe Hidden Bottleneck in Knowledge Workhttps://skylarbpayne.com/posts/leadership-bandwidth/https://skylarbpayne.com/posts/leadership-bandwidth/Why Working Harder Isn''t WorkingSat, 19 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMTBuilding an Experimentation Mindset in AI Teamshttps://skylarbpayne.com/posts/experimentation-mindset/https://skylarbpayne.com/posts/experimentation-mindset/A Leader''s GuideFri, 01 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMTWhat Effective Leaders Get Righthttps://skylarbpayne.com/posts/most-important-job-leaders/https://skylarbpayne.com/posts/most-important-job-leaders/Thu, 14 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMTA Practical Way to Evaluate Multi-Step and Multi-Turn Agentshttps://skylarbpayne.com/posts/multi-turn-eval/https://skylarbpayne.com/posts/multi-turn-eval/Mon, 01 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMTQuality Assurance for AIhttps://skylarbpayne.com/posts/qa-ai/https://skylarbpayne.com/posts/qa-ai/Wed, 26 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMTWhy RAG Is (Still) Not Deadhttps://skylarbpayne.com/posts/rag-not-dead/https://skylarbpayne.com/posts/rag-not-dead/The Enduring Value of Retrieval in the Era of Expanding Context WindowsSun, 06 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMTWhy Your Team is Slowhttps://skylarbpayne.com/posts/why-your-team-is-slow/https://skylarbpayne.com/posts/why-your-team-is-slow/The Hidden Cost of Missing Business ContextTue, 29 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMTModernizing Data Infrastructure: A Mindstrong Case Studyhttps://skylarbpayne.com/posts/mindstrong-data-infra/https://skylarbpayne.com/posts/mindstrong-data-infra/Tue, 11 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMTAI Observability is Just Observabilityhttps://skylarbpayne.com/posts/ai-observability/https://skylarbpayne.com/posts/ai-observability/Mon, 17 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMTEvals That Actually Get Usedhttps://skylarbpayne.com/posts/evals-that-get-used/https://skylarbpayne.com/posts/evals-that-get-used/A streamlined system for AI evaluation that closes the gap between seeing problems and fixing them.Tue, 17 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTBootstrapping AI Systems with Synthetic Data: 4 Approacheshttps://skylarbpayne.com/posts/synthetic-datagen/https://skylarbpayne.com/posts/synthetic-datagen/Sun, 23 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMTGPT-5.4 in OpenClaw doesn’t suck. Your prompts do.https://skylarbpayne.com/posts/openclaw-gpt-5-4-vs-opus/https://skylarbpayne.com/posts/openclaw-gpt-5-4-vs-opus/Anthropic changed OpenClaw billing. We ran evals, tuned the bootstrap files, and GPT-5.4 got a lot better.Sat, 04 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTBuilding an Automated Email Reply Agent with Pydantic AIhttps://skylarbpayne.com/posts/pydantic-ai/https://skylarbpayne.com/posts/pydantic-ai/A Story of SimplificationFri, 03 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMTThe Art of Iterative AI System Developmenthttps://skylarbpayne.com/posts/real-life-evals/https://skylarbpayne.com/posts/real-life-evals/A Practical Guide to Evaluation-Driven ImprovementSat, 08 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT5 Strategies for Improving Latency in AI Applicationshttps://skylarbpayne.com/posts/ai-latency/https://skylarbpayne.com/posts/ai-latency/Tue, 25 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMTIf DSPy is So Great, Why Isn't Anyone Using It?https://skylarbpayne.com/posts/dspy-engineering-patterns/https://skylarbpayne.com/posts/dspy-engineering-patterns/Any sufficiently complicated AI system contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden implementation of half of DSPy.Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Art of Interface Design: Making Good APIs that Scalehttps://skylarbpayne.com/posts/good-interfaces/https://skylarbpayne.com/posts/good-interfaces/Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT