Forward Deployed

Noah Brier & Lance Martin

At the intersection of AI, software development, and the enterprise. www.forwarddeployed.com

Episodes

  1. 27/12/2025

    Forward Deployed, Episode 3: Context Engineering

    Welcome to episode three of Forward Deployed. Noah and Lance dive deep into context engineering—the art and science of filling context windows with just the right information for agents to take the next action. Key Topics Covered - Context engineering: Why Karpathy’s term matters more than prompt engineering for agents - Three core techniques: Reducing context, isolating context, and offloading context to file systems - Skills vs MCPs: Why progressive disclosure beats loading everything into context - Claude Diary: Building agent memory through reflection and evolving CLAUDE.md - Why subagents should isolate context, not anthropomorphize org charts - Production patterns from Manus: Compaction, file system offloading, and sandbox architecture - The convergence of agent primitives: Read, write, reduce, and recombine - Why treating agents like humans works: Dual-use tools and new coworker onboarding Timestamps - 00:10 - What is context engineering and why should we care? - 00:37 - Karpathy’s definition: Filling context windows with just the right information - 01:15 - Context engineering vs prompt engineering: Tools bring context too - 02:27 - Three buckets: Reducing, isolating, and offloading context - 04:30 - Dynamic context loading: Skills as just-in-time context - 06:38 - Skills as context offloading: Progressive disclosure of tools - 09:15 - Sandboxes beyond Manus and Claude Code: Application integration patterns - 12:12 - Context isolation through subagents: Not org charts - 14:41 - Using isolation as a feature: Test-driven development with blank slate agents - 16:33 - Real-world subagent challenges: Shared file systems and context bottlenecks - 20:47 - Claude Diary: Automatic memory through session reflection - 22:53 - CLAUDE.md bloat: Reducing unnecessary words like Strunk and White - 28:06 - Dual-use tools: Why Claude Code uses bash, grep, and human-readable commands - 31:02 - Skills discovery problems: From manual search to automated finding - 34:22 - Agent primitives: Read, write, reduce, and creative recombination - 36:32 - Tool search and action space design: How to find the right function - 40:50 - Hooks as determinism: Injecting code into agent loops - 41:41 - Skills everywhere: ChatGPT’s progressive disclosure discovery - 43:12 - Nano Banana: Text on images unlocks new agentic workflows Links & References Core References * 🔗 Karpathy tweet on context engineering * 🎙️ Manus webinar on context engineering * 📄 Cognition blog post on multi-agents * 📄 Simon Willison on skills and file systems * 🔗 Anthropic Model Context Protocol announcement * 🔗 GitHub MCP docs (Anthropic) Technical Resources * 🔗 Claude Code hooks documentation * 🔗 Anthropic frontend design skills example * 📄 Obra magic skills repository * 🔗 Vercel sandboxes docs Tools & Frameworks * 🔗 LangChain Docs (Python) * 🔗 Cerebras Systems – Technology * 🔗 DeepMind Nano Banana info * 🔗 ChatGPT Skills directory Related Content - 🎙️ Karpathy on Dwarkesh Podcast - Discussion of AI development principles - 📚 The Elements of Style by Strunk and White - “Reduce unnecessary words” as principle for CLAUDE.md - 📄 The Bitter Lesson by Richard Sutton - General methods that leverage computation About the Hosts Noah Brier is co-founder of Alephic, an AI consulting company helping brands build custom AI systems. He writes about AI strategy and implementation. Lance Martin is a founding engineer at LangChain, where he works on developer tools for building AI applications. Connect with the Hosts - Noah Brier: LinkedIn | X/Twitter - Lance Martin: LinkedIn | X/Twitter * * * Subscribe for weekly episodes exploring how AI is actually being deployed in the real world. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.forwarddeployed.com

    49 min
  2. Forward Deployed, Episode 2: Claude Code Skills and the Progressive Disclosure Problem

    17/11/2025

    Forward Deployed, Episode 2: Claude Code Skills and the Progressive Disclosure Problem

    Welcome back to episode 2 of Forward Deployed. This week Noah and Lance dive deep into Claude Code skills, a deceptively simple feature that’s changing how we think about building AI agents. Noah walks through the Alephic CLI he’s been building and reveals a wild hook-based routing system using Cerebras at 3,000 tokens per second. Plus: Why Andreessen thinks AI isn’t the Internet redux. Key Topics Covered * Claude Code skills and the progressive disclosure problem * How Noah built a hook to solve the 10% skill hit rate * Tier 1 vs Tier 2 action space: Why Manus and Anthropic converged on the same architecture independently * 3,000 tokens per second: Using Cerebras Llama 120B as an invisible routing layer for every user message * The MCP/skill/command convergence: Are they all just different flavors of the same primitive? * Vision feedback loop: Turning Gemini into a Pentagram creative director to critique Claude’s web designs * Andreessen’s “computers v2” thesis: Why AI isn’t the Internet redux, it’s the first von Neumann architecture replacement in 80 years * Git workflows with Claude Code: Why Lance and Noah don’t worry about merge conflicts anymore Timestamps * 00:11 – Welcome to episode 2 on Claude Code skills * 00:28 – What are Claude Code skills? Not much more than a folder full of prompts * 01:10 – Lance: Skills as “instructing a new hire” with subfolder instructions * 01:25 – Simon Willison and Jesse Vincent’s “superpowers” discovery * 04:45 – Noah demos the Alephic CLI skill directory structure * 07:32 – The hook-based skill search system using Cerebras * 08:19 – Lance reveals: YAML front matter always loads into system prompt * 09:32 – The 10% skill hit rate problem when you have 10+ skills * 10:08 – Cerebras Llama 120B running at 3,000 tokens per second for invisible routing * 13:17 – The universal pattern: Everyone’s trying to control context * 15:59 – Tier 1 vs Tier 2 action space: Manus and Anthropic converge independently * 21:29 – Noah’s big challenge: Getting models to consistently look for skills * 28:04 – Hit rate drops to 10% even with only 4–5 skills * 30:54 – Could progressive disclosure become built-in like chain of thought? * 34:06 – Lance on externalizing context to file systems * 35:15 – Vision feedback loop: Gemini as Pentagram creative director critiquing Claude’s designs * 37:57 – Andreessen: AI isn’t the Internet, it’s computers v2 * 42:08 – Why Noah and Lance don’t worry about merge conflicts anymore Links & References Core References * 📄 Anthropic Engineering Blog on Skills – The engineering blog post Lance mentions about YAML front matter and system prompts * 🎙️ Andrej Karpathy on Dwarkesh Podcast – Discussion on small models and reasoning engines * 🎙️ Andreessen on Cheeky Pint Podcast – “AI is computers v2” thesis: First von Neumann architecture replacement in 80 years * 🎙️ Claude Code Podcast with Boris and Kat – Discussion on dual-use tools Tools & Frameworks * 🔗 Claude Code – Anthropic’s AI coding assistant * 🔗 Jesse Vincent’s Superpowers – Original skills plugin that inspired Noah * 🔗 Manus – Consumer agent with multi-tier action space architecture * 🔗 Cerebras – Llama 120B at 3,000 tokens per second * 🔗 Puppeteer MCP – Browser automation MCP * 🔗 Playwright MCP – Browser automation alternative * 🔗 GitHub CLI – Command line tool Lance loves for PR management Blog Posts * Simon Willison’s Blog – First place Noah saw Claude Code skills coverage * Cloudflare TypeScript Type Definitions Technique – Alternative to classic MCP definitions Companies Mentioned * Anthropic – Claude Code creator * LangChain – Where Lance is a founding engineer * Alephic – Noah’s AI consulting company * Pentagram – Design agency Noah used as creative director persona Development Tools * Obsidian – Note-taking use case for Claude Code * Git Work Trees – How the team manages multi-branch development About the Hosts Noah Brier is co-founder of Alephic, an AI consulting company helping brands build custom AI systems. He writes about AI strategy and implementation. Lance Martin is a founding engineer at LangChain, where he works on developer tools for building AI applications. Connect with the Hosts * Noah Brier: LinkedIn | X/Twitter * Lance Martin: LinkedIn | X/Twitter Subscribe for weekly episodes exploring how AI is actually being deployed in the real world. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.forwarddeployed.com

    50 min
  3. Forward Deployed, Episode 1: The Bitter Lesson

    03/11/2025

    Forward Deployed, Episode 1: The Bitter Lesson

    Welcome to the first episode of Forward Deployed (YouTube), a podcast exploring the intersection of AI, software development, and the enterprise. We’re very excited to have you join us as we tackle the wild world of Forward Deployed engineering. We hope to make this a roughly bi-weekly show and look forward to inviting guests in the future. The idea is to dive deep into the realities of making this stuff work in companies, building on our expertise as builders both inside and outside the enterprise. Thanks for listening, and please let us know what you think. Thanks, Noah & Lance Subscribe to Forward Deployed to be the first to hear about new episodes and articles. In this inaugural episode, hosts Noah Brier (Co-founder, Alephic) and Lance Martin (Founding Engineer, LangChain) dive deep into one of AI’s most controversial ideas: The Bitter Lesson. They unpack Richard Sutton’s famous essay, debate whether LLMs truly follow its principles, and explore what this means for anyone building with AI today. Key Topics Covered * The Bitter Lesson: Why more compute beats clever algorithms (or does it?) * Richard Sutton’s surprising take on why LLMs aren’t “bitter lesson pilled” * The evolution from CNNs to transformers through Lance’s journey from Stanford to Uber’s self-driving program to LangChain * Chain of thought prompting vs reasoning models - why your prompts might be breaking * The real challenges of enterprise AI adoption * Why ICs are adopting AI faster than managers * Building for imperfection: Why optimizing for today’s models is a mistake Timestamps * 00:00 - Introductions and backgrounds * 00:53 - Lance’s journey: Stanford PhD to Uber self-driving to LangChain * 02:49 - Noah’s path from marketing to AI obsession * 04:04 - What “forward deployed” really means * 09:04 - The Bitter Lesson explained * 11:31 - Why Sutton thinks LLMs aren’t following the bitter lesson * 23:09 - Chain of thought prompting and the reasoning model revolution * 24:19 - Building for future models, not current ones * 45:20 - ICs vs managers in AI adoption About the Hosts Noah Brier is co-founder of Alephic, an AI consulting company working with enterprise clients like PayPal, EY, Meta, and Amazon on AI-powered content intelligence and competitive analysis. Previously founded and sold Percolate (marketing tech). He also runs the BRXND conference series focused on marketing and AI. Lance Martin is a founding engineer at LangChain with a PhD from Stanford. Former computer vision lead for Uber’s self-driving truck program. Links & References Core References * 📄 The Bitter Lesson by Richard Sutton (2019) * 🎙️ Richard Sutton on Dwarkesh Podcast: “Father of RL thinks LLMs are a dead end” (September 26, 2025) * YouTube version * Apple Podcasts * Dwarkesh’s follow-up reflections * 📄 The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Recurrent Neural Networks by Andrej Karpathy (2015) * 📄 Trading Margin for Moat: Why the Forward Deployed Engineer Is the Hottest Job in Startups (A16Z) Related Podcast Appearances * 🎙️ Noah Brier on Every’s AI & I: “Claude Code Can Be Your Second Brain” (September 10, 2025) - Noah demonstrates his Claude Code-Obsidian setup for research and thinking * Listen on Spotify * Apple Podcasts Blog Posts from the Hosts * Learning the Bitter Lesson - Lance Martin * Context Engineering for Agents - Lance Martin * Thinking Ahead, Building Ahead - Charles Gallant * The Magic of Claude Code - Noah Brier * Strategic Software - Noah Brier * Things I Think I Think About AI - Noah Brier Connect with the Hosts * Noah Brier: LinkedIn | X/Twitter * Lance Martin: LinkedIn | X/Twitter * Alephic: alephic.com * BRXND: brxnd.ai Subscribe for weekly episodes exploring how AI is actually being deployed in the real world. Newsletter: Sign up for updates at forwarddeployed.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.forwarddeployed.com

    47 min
  • 3 Episodes

About

At the intersection of AI, software development, and the enterprise. www.forwarddeployed.com

Information

  • Creator
    Noah Brier & Lance Martin
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    3
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Alephic, LLC
  • Show Website
    Forward Deployed

You Might Also Like