From The Curio Team
AI explainers and guides
Sourced AI explainers and hands-on playbooks from The Curio Team: what changed this week, a method you can use, and one topic explained properly, with sources.
Deep Read · 2026-10-06
The Costly Bet on AI That Thinks HarderReasoning-optimized models now consume half of all AI token usage despite their computational expense. Developers are choosing slower, pricier systems because the quality gains justify the cost.
Signal · 2026-10-01
OpenAI Bets the Company on Unsupervised AIDots and 20-plus new products reveal OpenAI's pivot from AI assistants you control to agents that act alone. The bet is that enterprise customers will trust machines to run independently across their software.
Playbook · 2026-07-11
Rewrite hard emails without losing your pointThe blunt draft is your friend. Our routine keeps the point, fixes the tone, and gets the hard email out the door.
Playbook · 2026-07-11
Turn messy meeting notes into clean action itemsA five-minute routine that pulls owners, dates, and decisions out of a transcript, and catches the model when it guesses.
Signal · 2026-07-10
Stop Overtuning TemperatureWhat the knob actually does, why 0 to 1 is the whole map, and why a clear prompt beats fiddling every time.
Deep Read · 2026-07-10
What a context window really costs youA big window is a bigger checkbook, slower answers, and thinner attention. Here is how to spend it well.
Deep Read · 2026-07-09
What An AI Agent Actually IsA model in a loop with tools, memory, and a goal. Here is what works, what breaks, and how to use one without getting hurt.
Signal · 2026-07-08
Freeze the Top of Your PromptPrompt caching reuses a stable prefix across calls, cutting input cost and latency for anyone who keeps hitting the same context.
Playbook · 2026-07-08
The five-minute check that catches AI fakesVoice clones and flawless phishing beat instincts, not routines. Ours takes five minutes and two rules.
Deep Read · 2026-07-08
Why Your AI Still Makes Things UpRetrieval-augmented generation grounds a model in real documents, but only when the right one is found and actually read. Here is the pipeline, and every place it quietly breaks.
Signal · 2026-07-07
The Cheapest Correct Answer WinsMatch the model tier to the task, or pay twice: once in wasted tokens, once in silent failure.
Playbook · 2026-07-07
Turn a 40-page document into actions you trustThe three sentences that matter are on page 31. Our extraction routine finds them and proves where they came from.
Deep Read · 2026-07-07
How AI Models Actually LearnTraining builds the model once at huge cost. Inference answers cheaply, forever. Get the split and these tools stop feeling like magic.
Signal · 2026-07-06
Bigger Context Windows Are Not FreeHuge windows tempt you to paste in everything. Curation beats capacity almost every time.
Playbook · 2026-07-06
Research a purchase without falling for weak claimsA chat model is a great research assistant and a lazy fact-checker. We make it hunt for reasons not to buy.
Playbook · 2026-07-06
Three Checks For A Confident Wrong AnswerA two-minute routine that catches fluent, sure-sounding mistakes before they reach your work.
Signal · 2026-07-05
The setting most people skipReasoning mode ships on by default now, but most people never actually flip it on. Here is what it does and when it earns its keep.
Playbook · 2026-07-05
Plan a week of meals with real constraintsGeneric meal plans die by Wednesday. We feed the model our real constraints, then make it negotiate the grocery bill.
Playbook · 2026-07-05
Build a prompt template that survives editsFive named sections, in order, with the stable part frozen so your cache keeps hitting.