Test-Time Compute on AIBussin — AI applications, systems and books

Trajectory Search

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 17:26:00 +0100

An agent can make every local decision look reasonable and still lose the task.

A coding agent sees that test_checkout_redirect is failing, concludes there is an implementation bug in checkout.py, and then behaves impeccably for twenty steps: it reads the file, edits it, runs the tests, repairs the new failures its edit introduced, rewrites the patch, and runs the tests again. Every one of those steps is defensible given the step before it.

Reasoning Is More Than Architecture — Where Extra Computation Lives

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 10:41:00 +0100

Reasoning Is More Than Architecture — Where Extra Computation Lives

So far in Models From First Principles, we have changed several different things and called all of them model design.

We changed what a model predicts.

MR.Q produced one learned quality score.

EBT added Q, V, policy, and advantage.

SICQL turned those outputs into explicit model components.

Then we changed how computation unfolds.

HRM introduced recurrent state operating at different timescales.

The Moment: Intelligence beyond context

Fri, 19 Jun 2026 14:49:56 +0100

Most AI systems answer and move on. The next step is different: preserve the reasoning state, replay it, measure whether it improves, and keep only what survives verification.

Summary

Most AI workflows still treat intelligence as a single pass.

You ask a question. The model answers. Maybe you ask it to try again. Maybe you add more context. Maybe you save something to memory.

But the basic shape remains the same: