I build things
& explain how they work.
Because I am curious about tech and like clear thinking.
I’m Sam, a builder and Solution Engineer in Melbourne.
I write AI & Reality: modern AI in plain English (RAG, MCP).
I'm building Doppio, a real-time content layer for Google Slides.
AI & Reality: Modern AI in Plain English
About This Series
Great AI articles tend to mix a little bit of hard-won pragmatism with a lot of curiosity. This series captures the tradeoffs I see every day in discussions around this topic. Think of this as a field guide that favours working diagrams and code examples over buzzwords.
This series is not a definitive guide on how any of this works, or what an 'ideal state' architecture is - treat it more as my working notes on how I explain these concepts to others.
- Primers
Primer: Databases
A primer on the main database technologies and how they relate to LLMs
- Primers
RAG & MCP 101
A quick 101 to RAG & MCP - two key concepts for this series
- Code Examples
pgvector Setup for Airline RAG
A practical guide to setting up pgvector locally and running your first similarity query