https://mattalcock.com/blog/ Writing by Matt Alcock on AI products, agents and building teams, with the occasional detour into music and personal interests. en-gb https://mattalcock.com/blog/earned-autonomy https://mattalcock.com/blog/earned-autonomy Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:00:00 +0000 AI Products Agent autonomy shouldn't be a setting. A five-rung ladder for how agents earn trust, and what moves them up and down. https://mattalcock.com/blog/prd-for-ai-agents https://mattalcock.com/blog/prd-for-ai-agents Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:00:00 +0000 AI Products Write a one-page scope doc and an eval set before the PRD. What agents can see, do, must never do, and when they stop and ask. https://mattalcock.com/blog/data-team-test https://mattalcock.com/blog/data-team-test Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Data teams A Joel Test for data teams: my unpublished 2013 list, the 2026 version, and a new Product-Engineering Team Test. https://mattalcock.com/blog/intent-testing-rules-2026 https://mattalcock.com/blog/intent-testing-rules-2026 Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Startups Fake-door and intent tests still work, but the rules changed. A checklist for consent, honesty, reviews, AI ads and pricing. https://mattalcock.com/blog/hello-internet-revisited https://mattalcock.com/blog/hello-internet-revisited Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Data teams From a Linux box under my desk in 2012 to LLM analysts: how data work changed, and what didn't. https://mattalcock.com/blog/non-determinism-ux https://mattalcock.com/blog/non-determinism-ux Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:00:00 +0000 AI Products Three design patterns for when an AI product gives different answers, and one column to add to every spec. https://mattalcock.com/blog/the-yes-machine https://mattalcock.com/blog/the-yes-machine Sun, 01 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000 AI Products How sycophancy is quietly breaking AI products, and what builders should do about it. https://mattalcock.com/blog/track-zero https://mattalcock.com/blog/track-zero Thu, 01 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Music How one song can infect your entire musical life, and why that's a beautiful thing. https://mattalcock.com/blog/intent-testing https://mattalcock.com/blog/intent-testing Mon, 30 Mar 2020 09:00:00 +0000 Startups How to run an intent test with a landing page and ads, and read the results before committing to build. https://mattalcock.com/blog/business-idea-validation https://mattalcock.com/blog/business-idea-validation Fri, 27 Mar 2020 09:00:00 +0000 Startups Why founders should validate an idea before building it, and the cheap tests that tell you whether anyone wants it. https://mattalcock.com/blog/is-apple-an-ar-company https://mattalcock.com/blog/is-apple-an-ar-company Thu, 26 Apr 2018 09:00:00 +0000 AR The 2018 case that Apple was quietly becoming an AR company, six years before Vision Pro. https://mattalcock.com/blog/ar-filter-in-an-hour https://mattalcock.com/blog/ar-filter-in-an-hour Fri, 20 Apr 2018 09:00:00 +0000 AR Building and publishing a face-paint AR filter in under an hour with Facebook's AR Studio. https://mattalcock.com/blog/snapchat-ar-revenue-stream https://mattalcock.com/blog/snapchat-ar-revenue-stream Wed, 18 Apr 2018 09:00:00 +0000 AR How Snapchat turned AR Lenses into an ad product, and what sponsored lenses meant for brands. https://mattalcock.com/blog/best-ar-apps-2018 https://mattalcock.com/blog/best-ar-apps-2018 Mon, 16 Apr 2018 09:00:00 +0000 AR Fifteen apps that showed what ARKit and ARCore could do, from Pokémon GO to IKEA Place. https://mattalcock.com/blog/timing-python-code https://mattalcock.com/blog/timing-python-code Sun, 24 Feb 2013 09:00:00 +0000 Python A simple decorator to time Python functions, updated for Python 3 with perf_counter and functools.wraps. https://mattalcock.com/blog/python-decorators https://mattalcock.com/blog/python-decorators Sat, 05 Jan 2013 09:00:00 +0000 Python Function and class decorators, the @ syntax, and a memoize decorator that makes recursive Fibonacci fast. https://mattalcock.com/blog/python-spell-checker https://mattalcock.com/blog/python-spell-checker Wed, 05 Dec 2012 09:00:00 +0000 Python How Peter Norvig's 21-line spelling corrector works: counts, edit distance and Bayes' theorem. https://mattalcock.com/blog/hello-internet https://mattalcock.com/blog/hello-internet Tue, 04 Dec 2012 09:00:00 +0000 Archive The first post on my 2012 data science blog, and what I believed back then.