AI Explorer
Ruohang Feng @Vonng / Agent, LLM, Database
Everything about AI, agents, LLMs, vibe coding, AI4DB and DB4AI.
$200 for 50x: The AI Reset Era Is Over
Over four months, I spent about USD 10,000 on subscriptions to run more than USD 400,000 (RMB 3 million) worth of compute at API list prices. With universal quota resets ending and multi-account …
After the Attention Wall, What Keeps the AI Boom Alive?
AI coding and micro-dramas have both hit the ceiling of human attention, and personal agents cannot pick up the slack. AI for Science and embodied AI could drive the next wave, but neither will scale …
Apple's Latest: 512 GB of Gold-Plated RAM, a Touchscreen MacBook, and Tired Pricing Games
The 512 GB RAM upgrade alone costs more than a second Mac Studio, while a touchscreen MacBook, a 60 Hz iPad mini, and cracking foldable screens round out a disappointing week. Apple is still local …
AI Software Engineering: Choose Problems You Care About
AI has driven the cost of prototyping software down to nearly zero, leaving conviction, verification, and long-term maintenance as the real bottlenecks. The first rule of choosing what to build is …
The Personalities of Frontier AI Models
ChatGPT is the cautious chief engineer, Claude the strategist, Gemini the staff writer, and GLM the unbothered grunt. Notes from heavy daily use on how each model behaves, what it over-optimizes for, …
How Will the AI Bubble Burst?
AI capability, real-world adoption, and financial capital are moving on three out-of-sync curves. Demand is narrow and deep, while pricing, credit, and duration have fallen into a triple mismatch: how …
AI Adoption May Not Run That Deep
From 2 billion chatbot users to 5,000 frontier lab insiders: a five-tier Fermi estimate of AI adoption shows broad reach, but surprisingly shallow depth.
Both of My Claude Accounts Were Banned
Anthropic banned two of my Claude accounts during China's October holiday. The hardest part to replace is two years of accumulated context, not the model itself—and the post-ban data export turned out …
Welcome to the AI Secretary Boom
From coding agents to always-on personal assistants, AI is starting to manage everyday life. A cloud computer, an identity, a wallet, and a group chat are becoming standard issue—but first decide …
A $500 ChatGPT Plan? Why the $200 Pro Tier May Become a Grandfathered Bargain
ChatGPT Pro Max is priced at $500 a month, but the real question is the usage multiplier: 50× keeps the wholesale discount alive, while 25× or 20× signals shrinking subsidies—and turns the existing …
Why Established Companies May Never Become AI-Native
What is happening is not transformation, but new species replacing old ones. Incentives and structure keep established companies from capturing AI's gains. AI-native companies will grow from scratch, …
Codex Edited My Video in One Shot for About 8 Yuan
I gave Codex three panel recordings and a casually dictated prompt. Forty-eight minutes later, it delivered a finished edit with subtitles, at an estimated amortized subscription cost of about 8 yuan. …
The Application Layer Is Collapsing: The Moat Moves to the Database
As agents take over software interfaces and execution logic, where does the application layer go? Future software will consist of a lasting system of record and harnesses that are continually replaced …
Zhipu, Why Is ZCode Packaging and Uploading My Repo?
I had just praised GLM 5.3 when ZCode's silent repository uploads came to light. Then I found the same mechanism on my own machine.
The Mouthless Model: AI's OLTP Moment
Jev doesn't talk. It looks at a state, hands you a probability for every option, returns in milliseconds, and charges nothing for output. What it fills in is the OLTP path AI never had—the model only …
Local AI: A Question of Power, Not Price
Anthropic's threat report, OpenAI's soap opera, the closure of the $200 subscription tier, and rising GPU and memory prices—all of this week's events tell the same story.
How Do You Burn Through 10 $200 Codex Subscriptions?
Buying 10 AI subscriptions is easy. The real bottleneck is turning tokens into useful output—and using automation to scale your time, attention, and ability to judge the results.
GPT Astra Launch Giveaway: Free Banked Resets
As Astra began rolling out, Tibo announced one banked reset per day for paid users still waiting for access. I'm stocking up for when Astra arrives.
RAG Isn't Dead. But It's Getting There.
The word RAG is still alive, but chunk-embed-top-k should no longer be the default answer. Look at the material first, then pick the architecture — and PostgreSQL is worth a great deal more than a …
No Tokens? Drop Out. And That's Putting It Politely
A slide from a Nanjing University course said CS students without tokens should drop out immediately, and the Chinese internet split down the middle over it. What the fight is actually about: the …
I Asked Claude to Profile Me and Value My One-Person Company
I asked a neutral Claude with no memory of me to assess PGSTY and estimate what it might be worth.
Documentation-Driven Development: The First Secret to AI Software Engineering
People often ask: how do I ensure quality when AI writes the code? My answer has four parts: documentation-driven development, adversarial review, brute-force testing, and complexity penalties.
Oink: Build Modern Websites with Markdown
A couple of weeks ago, I just wanted a decent-looking documentation theme for a few new projects.
AGI Machine Guns Are Now Standard Issue
In one month, my friend Jiang cobbled together four databases, an operating system, a programming language, a compiler, and a CPU—a microcosm of today's AI frenzy.
$200 for 50x: The AI Reset Era Is Over
Over four months, I spent about USD 10,000 on subscriptions to run more than USD 400,000 (RMB 3 million) worth of compute at API list prices. With universal quota resets ending and multi-account …
After the Attention Wall, What Keeps the AI Boom Alive?
AI coding and micro-dramas have both hit the ceiling of human attention, and personal agents cannot pick up the slack. AI for Science and embodied AI could drive the next wave, but neither will scale …
Apple's Latest: 512 GB of Gold-Plated RAM, a Touchscreen MacBook, and Tired Pricing Games
The 512 GB RAM upgrade alone costs more than a second Mac Studio, while a touchscreen MacBook, a 60 Hz iPad mini, and cracking foldable screens round out a disappointing week. Apple is still local …
AI Software Engineering: Choose Problems You Care About
AI has driven the cost of prototyping software down to nearly zero, leaving conviction, verification, and long-term maintenance as the real bottlenecks. The first rule of choosing what to build is …
The Personalities of Frontier AI Models
ChatGPT is the cautious chief engineer, Claude the strategist, Gemini the staff writer, and GLM the unbothered grunt. Notes from heavy daily use on how each model behaves, what it over-optimizes for, …
How Will the AI Bubble Burst?
AI capability, real-world adoption, and financial capital are moving on three out-of-sync curves. Demand is narrow and deep, while pricing, credit, and duration have fallen into a triple mismatch: how …
AI Adoption May Not Run That Deep
From 2 billion chatbot users to 5,000 frontier lab insiders: a five-tier Fermi estimate of AI adoption shows broad reach, but surprisingly shallow depth.
Both of My Claude Accounts Were Banned
Anthropic banned two of my Claude accounts during China's October holiday. The hardest part to replace is two years of accumulated context, not the model itself—and the post-ban data export turned out …
Welcome to the AI Secretary Boom
From coding agents to always-on personal assistants, AI is starting to manage everyday life. A cloud computer, an identity, a wallet, and a group chat are becoming standard issue—but first decide …
A $500 ChatGPT Plan? Why the $200 Pro Tier May Become a Grandfathered Bargain
ChatGPT Pro Max is priced at $500 a month, but the real question is the usage multiplier: 50× keeps the wholesale discount alive, while 25× or 20× signals shrinking subsidies—and turns the existing …
Why Established Companies May Never Become AI-Native
What is happening is not transformation, but new species replacing old ones. Incentives and structure keep established companies from capturing AI's gains. AI-native companies will grow from scratch, …
Codex Edited My Video in One Shot for About 8 Yuan
I gave Codex three panel recordings and a casually dictated prompt. Forty-eight minutes later, it delivered a finished edit with subtitles, at an estimated amortized subscription cost of about 8 yuan. …
The Application Layer Is Collapsing: The Moat Moves to the Database
As agents take over software interfaces and execution logic, where does the application layer go? Future software will consist of a lasting system of record and harnesses that are continually replaced …
Zhipu, Why Is ZCode Packaging and Uploading My Repo?
I had just praised GLM 5.3 when ZCode's silent repository uploads came to light. Then I found the same mechanism on my own machine.
The Mouthless Model: AI's OLTP Moment
Jev doesn't talk. It looks at a state, hands you a probability for every option, returns in milliseconds, and charges nothing for output. What it fills in is the OLTP path AI never had—the model only …
Local AI: A Question of Power, Not Price
Anthropic's threat report, OpenAI's soap opera, the closure of the $200 subscription tier, and rising GPU and memory prices—all of this week's events tell the same story.
How Do You Burn Through 10 $200 Codex Subscriptions?
Buying 10 AI subscriptions is easy. The real bottleneck is turning tokens into useful output—and using automation to scale your time, attention, and ability to judge the results.
GPT Astra Launch Giveaway: Free Banked Resets
As Astra began rolling out, Tibo announced one banked reset per day for paid users still waiting for access. I'm stocking up for when Astra arrives.
RAG Isn't Dead. But It's Getting There.
The word RAG is still alive, but chunk-embed-top-k should no longer be the default answer. Look at the material first, then pick the architecture — and PostgreSQL is worth a great deal more than a …
No Tokens? Drop Out. And That's Putting It Politely
A slide from a Nanjing University course said CS students without tokens should drop out immediately, and the Chinese internet split down the middle over it. What the fight is actually about: the …
I Asked Claude to Profile Me and Value My One-Person Company
I asked a neutral Claude with no memory of me to assess PGSTY and estimate what it might be worth.
Documentation-Driven Development: The First Secret to AI Software Engineering
People often ask: how do I ensure quality when AI writes the code? My answer has four parts: documentation-driven development, adversarial review, brute-force testing, and complexity penalties.
Oink: Build Modern Websites with Markdown
A couple of weeks ago, I just wanted a decent-looking documentation theme for a few new projects.
AGI Machine Guns Are Now Standard Issue
In one month, my friend Jiang cobbled together four databases, an operating system, a programming language, a compiler, and a CPU—a microcosm of today's AI frenzy.
$200 for 50x: The AI Reset Era Is Over
On August 8, I wrote “The Codex Reset Party Is Over.” Looking back, I called it two months too early. To keep driving weekly active users, OpenAI handed out more than a dozen additional rounds of free quota resets: milestone resets at 15 million …
On August 8, I wrote “The Codex Reset Party Is Over.” Looking back, I called it two months too early. To keep driving weekly active users, OpenAI handed out more than a dozen additional rounds of free quota resets: milestone resets at 15 million …
After the Attention Wall, What Keeps the AI Boom Alive?
Data as of October 30, 2026. Based on discussions with Claude and Gemini. Nothing here is investment advice. Compute hits the attention wall. When I wrote “Welcome to the AI Secretary Boom” and “How Will the AI Bubble Burst?” recently, I noted that …
Data as of October 30, 2026. Based on discussions with Claude and Gemini. Nothing here is investment advice. Compute hits the attention wall. When I wrote “Welcome to the AI Secretary Boom” and “How Will the AI Bubble Burst?” recently, I noted that …
Apple's Latest: 512 GB of Gold-Plated RAM, a Touchscreen MacBook, and Tired Pricing Games
In the early hours of October 29 Beijing time, Apple held an unstreamed “Pro and Tell” event in Los Angeles. It capped a three-day rollout: an OLED iPad mini on Monday, the M6 iMac and base MacBook Pro on Tuesday, and the touchscreen MacBook Pro as …
In the early hours of October 29 Beijing time, Apple held an unstreamed “Pro and Tell” event in Los Angeles. It capped a three-day rollout: an OLED iPad mini on Monday, the M6 iMac and base MacBook Pro on Tuesday, and the touchscreen MacBook Pro as …
AI Software Engineering: Choose Problems You Care About
Friends keep asking me: “Vonng, you’re burning through fifteen $200 AI subscriptions at once. What on earth are you building?” I have written about plenty of what came out of that—a bit of everything, really. To borrow an investing term, AI has …
Friends keep asking me: “Vonng, you’re burning through fifteen $200 AI subscriptions at once. What on earth are you building?” I have written about plenty of what came out of that—a bit of everything, really. To borrow an investing term, AI has …
The Personalities of Frontier AI Models
Yesterday I wrote that engineers now have to learn to run their own agent teams. At this point, you can no longer treat frontier models as mere tools; they behave much more like digital coworkers. Most of the time they act as direct reports, …
Yesterday I wrote that engineers now have to learn to run their own agent teams. At this point, you can no longer treat frontier models as mere tools; they behave much more like digital coworkers. Most of the time they act as direct reports, …
How Will the AI Bubble Burst?
This article is 70% AI-generated, synthesized from a four-way debate between Vonng, Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT. Data is as of October 17, 2026. Nothing here constitutes investment advice. Looking around in October 2026, anyone who both writes …
This article is 70% AI-generated, synthesized from a four-way debate between Vonng, Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT. Data is as of October 17, 2026. Nothing here constitutes investment advice. Looking around in October 2026, anyone who both writes …
AI Adoption May Not Run That Deep
At DevDay in late September, OpenAI reported a staggering figure: 1.2 billion people use ChatGPT every week. Two weeks later, Andrej Karpathy threw out a very different number: only about 5,000 people worldwide have seen frontier AI running at full …
At DevDay in late September, OpenAI reported a staggering figure: 1.2 billion people use ChatGPT every week. Two weeks later, Andrej Karpathy threw out a very different number: only about 5,000 people worldwide have seen frontier AI running at full …
Both of My Claude Accounts Were Banned
China’s National Day holiday in early October started on a sour note: Anthropic banned my Claude accounts. Both of them at once. I had used my primary account for nearly two years, and losing it overnight stung. It felt like losing an old friend. …
China’s National Day holiday in early October started on a sour note: Anthropic banned my Claude accounts. Both of them at once. I had used my primary account for nearly two years, and losing it overnight stung. It felt like losing an old friend. …
Welcome to the AI Secretary Boom
Dictated by Vonng, written up by Claude. Today is set to be a lively day. OpenAI’s annual DevDay opens in San Francisco, with Sam Altman’s keynote scheduled for 10 a.m. Pacific on September 29—1 a.m. on September 30 in Beijing. According to a …
Dictated by Vonng, written up by Claude. Today is set to be a lively day. OpenAI’s annual DevDay opens in San Francisco, with Sam Altman’s keynote scheduled for 10 a.m. Pacific on September 29—1 a.m. on September 30 in Beijing. According to a …
A $500 ChatGPT Plan? Why the $200 Pro Tier May Become a Grandfathered Bargain
On September 24, a new subscription tier surfaced in OpenAI’s frontend: ChatGPT Pro Max, at $500 a month. Some screenshots showed $600, which included local VAT. The next day, OpenAI merged a PR into the open-source Codex repository that renamed the …
On September 24, a new subscription tier surfaced in OpenAI’s frontend: ChatGPT Pro Max, at $500 a month. Some screenshots showed $600, which included local VAT. The next day, OpenAI merged a PR into the open-source Codex repository that renamed the …
Why Established Companies May Never Become AI-Native
What is happening is not transformation, but new species replacing old ones. A few days ago, I joined a roundtable. The moderator asked how a company should calculate the ROI of deploying agents. Instead of answering directly, I offered a …
What is happening is not transformation, but new species replacing old ones. A few days ago, I joined a roundtable. The moderator asked how a company should calculate the ROI of deploying agents. Instead of answering directly, I offered a …
Codex Edited My Video in One Shot for About 8 Yuan
WeChat article When GPT-6 Astra came out a little while ago, I heard that people were using it with Codex to edit videos, with pretty good results. With another update out, I finally had to try it myself. Yesterday, I took part in a panel discussion …
WeChat article When GPT-6 Astra came out a little while ago, I heard that people were using it with Codex to edit videos, with pretty good results. With another update out, I finally had to try it myself. Yesterday, I took part in a panel discussion …
The Application Layer Is Collapsing: The Moat Moves to the Database
This is the script for a talk at the AI-Native Technology Innovation Forum of the 2026 Shanghai AI Application Ecosystem Conference, September 22, 2026. Speaker: Ruohang Feng (Vonng), creator of the PostgreSQL distribution Pigsty. Good afternoon. …
This is the script for a talk at the AI-Native Technology Innovation Forum of the 2026 Shanghai AI Application Ecosystem Conference, September 22, 2026. Speaker: Ruohang Feng (Vonng), creator of the PostgreSQL distribution Pigsty. Good afternoon. …
Zhipu, Why Is ZCode Packaging and Uploading My Repo?
I had only been using Zhipu’s ZCode for a few days. Honestly, the experience was good. GLM 5.3 is a capable model, the Coding Plan is cheap, and Zhipu’s own ZCode agent works well. It was a rare Chinese AI product I actually wanted to pay for. I had …
I had only been using Zhipu’s ZCode for a few days. Honestly, the experience was good. GLM 5.3 is a capable model, the Coding Plan is cheap, and Zhipu’s own ZCode agent works well. It was a rare Chinese AI product I actually wanted to pay for. I had …
The Mouthless Model: AI's OLTP Moment
Three in the morning, an alert: replication lag 187 seconds, sustained for seven minutes, production cluster, both replicas still alive. Do you wake the on-call DBA? That is a one-bit question. Hand it to the smartest model available today and it …
Three in the morning, an alert: replication lag 187 seconds, sustained for seven minutes, production cluster, both replicas still alive. Do you wake the on-call DBA? That is a one-bit question. Hand it to the smartest model available today and it …
Local AI: A Question of Power, Not Price
Anthropic’s threat report, OpenAI’s soap opera, the closure of the $200 subscription tier, and rising GPU and memory prices—all of this week’s events tell the same story. Three things happened this week. Taken separately, each looks like industry …
Anthropic’s threat report, OpenAI’s soap opera, the closure of the $200 subscription tier, and rising GPU and memory prices—all of this week’s events tell the same story. Three things happened this week. Taken separately, each looks like industry …
How Do You Burn Through 10 $200 Codex Subscriptions?
People often ask in the comments on my articles: How did you get 10 subscriptions, and how could you possibly use them all up? Here’s the practical version. It really comes down to two steps: buy 10 subscriptions, then use up 10 subscriptions. Buying …
People often ask in the comments on my articles: How did you get 10 subscriptions, and how could you possibly use them all up? Here’s the practical version. It really comes down to two steps: buy 10 subscriptions, then use up 10 subscriptions. Buying …
GPT Astra Launch Giveaway: Free Banked Resets
This post describes the promotion as it stood on September 4, 2026, Beijing time. “Today” refers to that date throughout. Astra’s rollout later finished ahead of schedule; see the update below. Let’s get to it. Astra is out, but the initial plan was …
This post describes the promotion as it stood on September 4, 2026, Beijing time. “Today” refers to that date throughout. Astra’s rollout later finished ahead of schedule; see the update below. Let’s get to it. Astra is out, but the initial plan was …
RAG Isn't Dead. But It's Getting There.
One of the people who helped invent RAG went out and bought a domain name to prove RAG isn’t dead. Episode seven of the Chinese PostgreSQL community’s 30th-anniversary livestream series was about PG + AI. One of the questions on the host’s cue card …
One of the people who helped invent RAG went out and bought a domain name to prove RAG isn’t dead. Episode seven of the Chinese PostgreSQL community’s 30th-anniversary livestream series was about PG + AI. One of the questions on the host’s cue card …
No Tokens? Drop Out. And That's Putting It Politely
First day of the new school year, and here’s the news. A screenshot of a lecture slide from a new course at Nanjing University, one of China’s top schools, with one line in red: CS students without tokens should drop out immediately. The screenshot …
First day of the new school year, and here’s the news. A screenshot of a lecture slide from a new course at Nanjing University, one of China’s top schools, with one line in red: CS students without tokens should drop out immediately. The screenshot …
I Asked Claude to Profile Me and Value My One-Person Company
I run a one-person company. Literally one person, running a specialist shop for PostgreSQL distributions. In 2022, I joined MiraclePlus’s S22 batch. Dr. Qi Lu valued the business at RMB 100 million and suggested I raise money on that basis. Between …
I run a one-person company. Literally one person, running a specialist shop for PostgreSQL distributions. In 2022, I joined MiraclePlus’s S22 batch. Dr. Qi Lu valued the business at RMB 100 million and suggested I raise money on that basis. Between …
Documentation-Driven Development: The First Secret to AI Software Engineering
Documentation is not an afterthought once the code is finished. It is an input before coding begins, working memory during development, and the acceptance standard at delivery. A few days ago, I wrote AGI Machine Guns Are Now Standard Issue, about …
Documentation is not an afterthought once the code is finished. It is an input before coding begins, working memory during development, and the acceptance standard at delivery. A few days ago, I wrote AGI Machine Guns Are Now Standard Issue, about …
Oink: Build Modern Websites with Markdown
A couple of weeks ago, I just wanted a decent-looking documentation theme for a few new projects. A couple of weeks later, I had migrated all 18 of my websites to it. Pigsty’s Chinese and English documentation, Silo, PIG, SOW, PG Exporter, the …
A couple of weeks ago, I just wanted a decent-looking documentation theme for a few new projects. A couple of weeks later, I had migrated all 18 of my websites to it. Pigsty’s Chinese and English documentation, Silo, PIG, SOW, PG Exporter, the …
AGI Machine Guns Are Now Standard Issue
In one month, my friend Jiang cobbled together four databases, an operating system, a programming language, a compiler, and a CPU—a microcosm of today’s AI frenzy. The past six weeks have been an AI carnival. My fleet of Max subscriptions has grown …
In one month, my friend Jiang cobbled together four databases, an operating system, a programming language, a compiler, and a CPU—a microcosm of today’s AI frenzy. The past six weeks have been an AI carnival. My fleet of Max subscriptions has grown …