Retrieval augmented generation

Aug 17, 2026

Context Engineering in 2026 — Louis-François Bouchard, Omar Solano & Samridhi Vaid, Towards AI

Experiments with an AI tutor reveal that not compacting context often outperforms summarization, leading to better recall, lower cost, and faster responses, primarily due to LLM API prompt caching. Compaction invalidates the cache, making it unexpectedly expensive. While cloud environments benefit from full history, local hardware limits necessitate compaction, highlighting the need to prioritize actual constraints over default compaction strategies.

Aug 02, 2026

Understanding AI Agent Hallucination in AI Systems

Learn about AI hallucinations, why they occur in autonomous agents, and how they pose new risks as AI takes action. Discover key mitigation strategies including data grounding, tool-based reasoning, scope control, and human-in-the-loop interventions to ensure reliable AI performance.

Jul 17, 2026

On AI and Knowledge — Pablo Castro, Distinguished Engineer & CVP for AI Knowledge, Microsoft

Pablo Castro explores the three pillars of AI knowledge—intrinsic, extrinsic, and learned—explaining how models leverage parametric memory, agents integrate with enterprise data through sophisticated RAG systems like Foundry IQ, and how continuous learning loops, facilitated by tools like the Agent Optimizer, enable self-improving agents, driving the next wave of AI applications.

Jul 17, 2026

Closing Keynote: Garry Tan, Y Combinator

Garry Tan, President of Y Combinator, details how AI-native companies are achieving unprecedented productivity and scale with lean teams. He introduces the concept of "wiring the work" by treating AI as a workforce where organizational components are encoded into markdown "skill files." Tan explains how "company brains" act as a library and librarian, managing institutional knowledge to overcome human memory limits. He emphasizes the discipline of "skillifying" every task to ensure continuous learning and calls on founders to build these new AI-native infrastructures to "boil the ocean"—tackling previously insurmountable problems.

Jun 28, 2026

We Cut 94% of AI Coding Tokens With a Local Code Index - Rajkumar Sakthivel, Tesco

Rajkumar Sakthivel details how an unexpected surge in AI coding tool costs led to the discovery that sending excessive, irrelevant context was the primary culprit. He introduces the Code Context Engine (CCE), a local retrieval layer that intelligently prunes context using AST-aware chunks, hybrid search, and relevance scoring, resulting in up to 94% token reduction and significant cost savings. The talk emphasizes that optimizing input context, not just the AI model, is paramount for efficient and accurate AI-assisted coding.

May 16, 2026

Connecting the Dots with Context Graphs — Stephen Chin, Neo4j

Stephen Chin of Neo4j argues that traditional RAG is insufficient because AI agents lose the reasoning behind past decisions. He introduces Context Graphs as a solution to capture the 'why' behind decisions, creating a queryable system of precedent that provides grounded, explainable, and auditable results.