Research library: AI agents, voice AI and web platforms
Dated, source-evaluated research reports from AR Labs on voice AI, AI agent orchestration, context engineering, RAG, verification and web platforms.
This library holds research reports that AR Labs carried out before making engineering decisions. Each one started from a concrete question: which framework to build a voice agent on, how a long-running AI agent should resume its work after a break, how to stop a multi-round LLM code review from finding more problems every round, or whether a small web app should default to Cloudflare. The reports are published here close to how they were written, with internal references removed, so that a reader can see the evidence behind our choices and reuse it. Each report links to the project or method page it informed.
The research draws on many sources for each question: vendor documentation, source code, academic papers, practitioner writing and benchmarks. Where a report scored its sources, it used the CRAAP test (currency, relevance, authority, accuracy and purpose) and checked important claims against more than one independent source. Claims that could not be confirmed are marked as such, and every report keeps its citations so a reader can check them.
Every report records the date it was carried out. The tools and models it covers change month by month, so a finding that held in February may not hold in November. Read each one as an account of the field on that date, not as current advice.
The reports are grouped by subject: voice AI, agent orchestration, context and memory, verification, interfaces, platforms and methods.
Method 1
Voice AI 4
- 05.02
Wispr Flow alternatives: local speech-to-text apps for macOS
Voice AI
Which macOS dictation app gives low cost, on-device privacy and system-wide typing? Free and one-time-purchase Whisper-based apps match Wispr Flow.
Rev 2026-04-179 min read - 05.03
Pipecat voice agent architecture: pipeline, STT, TTS and latency
Voice AI
How to build a real-time voice agent on Pipecat with Daily WebRTC, Deepgram, ElevenLabs and LangGraph: configuration, latency budgets and known pitfalls.
Rev 2026-03-0210 min read - 05.04
Sesame Conversational Speech Model (CSM) and open-source voice AI
Voice AI
How Sesame's CSM produces natural conversational speech, and which open-source frameworks, speech-to-speech and TTS models can build comparable voice agents.
Rev 2026-02-0217 min read - 05.05
Real-time voice AI agent architecture for coding agents such as Claude Code
Voice AI
How to put a real-time voice interface in front of a CLI coding agent like Claude Code: multimodal models vs STT-LLM-TTS pipelines, transports, VAD and bridges.
Rev 2026-02-0213 min read
Agent orchestration 9
- 05.06
Building autonomous agents on Hermes: planning, cron and resume
Agent orchestration
How public builders make Hermes agents plan, run over many sessions and resume. Long runs rely on cron and Kanban, not a plan the agent revises across weeks.
Rev 2026-11-0215 min read - 05.07
AI agent planning and execution loop: holding a plan, choosing the next task and resuming
Agent orchestration
How an AI agent should hold a plan, pick its next task among competing goals and resume after a break, drawn from marketing planning and harness design.
Rev 2026-11-0218 min read - 05.08
Logical levels and the theory of types applied to AI agent goals
Agent orchestration
What Bateson's logical levels and Russell's theory of types imply for nesting an AI agent's goals, approaches and tasks, and which failures to avoid.
Rev 2026-11-0116 min read - 05.09
AI software factories: a survey of backlog-to-merged-code systems
Agent orchestration
A survey of more than 60 AI software factories that turn a backlog or spec into verified, merged code. Deploy stages and merge queues are rarest.
Rev 2026-09-2914 min read - 05.10
AI agent orchestration driver: reconciliation loops versus events
Agent orchestration
Which execution model suits a long-running, crash-prone AI agent orchestration driver? A level-triggered reconciler that re-reads durable state.
Rev 2026-08-2611 min read - 05.11
Prompting multi-agent orchestration: delegation rules and failure modes
Agent orchestration
How should a lead AI agent brief and coordinate parallel worker agents? Anthropic's published practice plus nine recurring failure modes and their fixes.
Rev 2026-07-102 min read - 05.12
Harness engineering for AI agents: origins and sources
Agent orchestration
Where did the term harness engineering come from? Hashimoto coined the practice and LangChain the formula Agent = Model + Harness, in early 2026.
Rev 2026-05-1818 min read - 05.13
Self-hosted always-on AI agents: OpenClaw, Hermes, Claude Agent SDK
Agent orchestration
Self-hosted always-on AI agent platforms in April 2026: OpenClaw, Hermes, NanoBot, NanoClaw, OpenFang and the Claude Agent SDK compared on security and memory.
Rev 2026-05-0115 min read - 05.23
Scheduling a task dependency graph across AI coding agents
Agent orchestration
How to run a task dependency graph on a small pool of AI coding agents: scheduling theory favours ready-set list scheduling by critical path over waves.
Rev 2026-10-0711 min read
Context and memory 5
- 05.14
Moving AI agent sessions between Claude Code, Codex, Pi and machines
Context and memory
How to carry an AI agent session across harnesses and machines. Open-source converters cover much of it, but none moves every native record losslessly.
Rev 2026-11-0711 min read - 05.15
AI agent memory for changing facts: append-only records versus memory systems
Context and memory
What memory lets an AI agent know which facts hold now and how they changed. Evidence favours curated, dated records read in full over extracted memory.
Rev 2026-10-3116 min read - 05.16
Markdown RAG for Claude Code and LangGraph: grep versus vector search
Context and memory
How to run RAG over a few markdown files from Claude Code and port it to LangGraph: grep retrieval first, a ChromaDB vector script only for semantic queries.
Rev 2026-02-136 min read - 05.17
RAG frameworks for LangGraph and Claude Code in 2026
Context and memory
Which RAG frameworks, vector stores, PDF parsers and embeddings suit document Q&A with LangGraph? LangChain plus LangGraph, hybrid search and Qdrant lead.
Rev 2026-02-1313 min read - 05.18
Context engineering for long-running AI agents: strategies and memory
Context and memory
How to keep long-running AI agents effective as context fills: write, select, compress and isolate context, plus memory, checkpointing and AI review.
Rev 2026-01-059 min read
Verification 3
- 05.19
Test budgets for AI coding agents: cost proportional to change size
Verification
How teams scale verification to change size: test impact analysis, staged CI and a ten-minute gate. No AI coding agent found ties tests to change size.
Rev 2026-10-0916 min read - 05.20
Why multi-round LLM code review loops diverge
Verification
Why repeated LLM code review rounds find more critical issues on smaller problems instead of converging, and which mitigations have the strongest evidence.
Rev 2026-09-233 min read - 05.21
LLM-as-reviewer methods: quality and readability checks
Verification
Which LLM-as-reviewer methods lift quality and readability: fresh-context review, per-criterion rubrics, cross-family judges. Readability scores mislead.
Rev 2026-08-1113 min read
Interfaces 4
- 05.22
Displaying a task dependency graph so one person sees what to do next
Interfaces
How to draw a 20 to 60 item work dependency DAG so one person sees what to do next and why. Layered swimlanes with a ready-to-start band came out ahead.
Rev 2026-10-1415 min read - 05.24
Technical blog readability: evidence-based typography and layout
Interfaces
Which typography, contrast, spacing and code-block choices make technical blog posts easiest to read in light and dark mode, graded by strength of evidence.
Rev 2026-07-1218 min read - 05.26
Node-graph and infinite-canvas tools for a human and AI agent task graph
Interfaces
Which node-graph libraries and infinite-canvas tools suit a shared human and AI agent view of a task dependency graph? React Flow and beads_viewer fit best.
Rev 2026-03-1412 min read
Platforms 2
- 05.27
Cloudflare Workers, D1 and R2 as a default for new web apps
Platforms
Why developers default to Cloudflare Workers, D1 and R2 for new web apps, and which critiques hold: single-region writes, runtime limits, lock-in, no spend cap.
Rev 2026-11-118 min read - 05.28
Technical blog stacks: how Karpathy, Simon Willison, Dan Luu and Julia Evans build theirs
Platforms
How seven well-known technical writers build their blogs. Simple, stable infrastructure and plain Markdown go with more posting and easier migrations.
Rev 2026-04-1515 min read
Methods 2
- 05.29
Vibe coding to vibe engineering: AI-assisted coding in early 2026
Methods
How AI-assisted coding moved from casual vibe coding to structured vibe engineering, and the tools, methods and multi-agent patterns of early 2026.
Rev 2026-03-0514 min read - 05.30
Writing PRDs and PRPs for AI coding agents: expert methods compared
Methods
How experts write PRDs and PRPs (product requirement prompts) for AI coding agents: shorter documents, dependency-ordered phases and testable checkpoints.
Rev 2026-02-138 min read