# Almost Entirely Human
> A weekly newsletter about AI (and sometimes GIS) by Christopher Moravec. 
Public Ghost content for AI and LLM tooling. Use `/llms-full.txt` for consolidated page and post context.
Append `.md` to any post or page URL to get the content in Markdown (for example, `/example-post.md`).

## Pages
- [The CliffsNotes](https://christophermoravec.com/about.md) - Who Am I When I was young, probably elementary school, I took apart a broken mechanical desk clock to see how the gears worked. I started taking screws out and popped the back off. Immediately, all the gears fell out and scattered across the floor, under the workbench. They were everywhere. I never…
- [Let's Connect!](https://christophermoravec.com/contact.md) - If you’re organizing a conference or workshop and are looking for a speaker who can cover anything from AI, how software development works, or leadership insights – please reach out! Also, please reach out if you want to talk about a software project, or to share a story about your own tech journey…
- [Don't Panic: It's Just AI](https://christophermoravec.com/dont-panic-its-just-ai.md) - Want an AI Generated Custom Sticker? Or Join My Weekly Newsletter: Almost Entirely Human
- [Privacy](https://christophermoravec.com/privacy.md) - Last updated: April 2026 This is my personal website. I write a weekly newsletter, post videos, and recently added an AI chatbot. Here's what happens with your data when you visit. The Short Version * I don't sell your data. Ever. * Newsletter emails are stored by Ghost and delivered via Mailgun. G…
- [Resources](https://christophermoravec.com/resources.md) - Here are the tools, people, and resources I actually use, and a few I think you should know about too. Tools I'm using right now * Claude Code - What we use at dymaptic for writing complete applications. Powers my live-coding demos. Also what JAWS (my AI agent) uses to get work done. * Claude Fable…
- [Speaker Details](https://christophermoravec.com/speaker-details.md) - Here you will find my current biographies in various lengths and tones. Hopefully, there is one that meets your conference needs, but if not, please let me know. Social Links * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christophermoravec * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMorehavoc Professional Ver…
- [Keynotes, Presentations, Livestreams](https://christophermoravec.com/topics.md) - Where I'll be next: * EnerGIS 2026 — GeoAI Panel (September 16, 2026) - Canonsburg, PA * 2026 New York State GeoSpatial Summit (October 6-7, 2026) - The Lodge, Skaneateles, NY - Presenter & Panelist Where I've been Recently: * Petroleum User Group (PUG) Webinar — Vibe Coding for Energy GIS: Buildin…

## Posts
- [Episode 81 - How on earth do AI watermarks work?](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-81-how-on-earth-do-ai-watermarks-work.md) - An AI watermark works by letting a secret function, not a random number generator, determine which word is selected from the words the model was already willing to say next.
- [Claude Clue #37: Let Another Claude Keep Score](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-37-let-another-claude-keep-score.md) - Claude is very good at telling you it's done. Now another Claude gets a say.
- [Episode 80 - Two Types of Writing](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-80-two-types-of-writing.md) - There are two ways to write with AI: it drafts and you edit, or you draft and it edits. Each path leaves different “watermarks” on the result, so pick one on purpose.
- [Claude Clue #36: Give Your Claudes a Bulletin Board](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-36-give-your-claudes-a-bulletin-board-2.md) - Your Claude just renamed an interface. Your coworker's Claude has no idea.
- [Episode 79 - AI-Generated Metadata Philosophy](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-79-ai-generated-metadata-philosophy.md) - Metadata matters to search as much as it does to the AI Agent, so make it count!
- [Claude Clue #35: Put Fable in the Corner Office](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-35-put-fable-in-the-corner-office.md) - Anthropic's biggest model is also the easiest one to waste.
- [Claude Clue #34: Give Your Orchestrator Two Jobs](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-34-give-your-orchestrator-two-jobs.md) - Put a heavy-thinking model at the top and give it exactly two jobs: hand out assignments and verify that each one came back complete.
- [Episode 78 - Secret Cyborg: Special Disclosure Unit](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-78-secret-cyborg-special-disclosure-unit.md) - On August 2, 2026, part of the EU AI Act became active, and now you legally can't be a Secret Cyborg (kinda).
- [Episode 77 - The Incredible Shark](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-77-the-incredible-shark.md) - Can a Shark (I mean AI) build a physics-based Rube Goldberg machine video game?
- [Claude Clue #33: Let Your AI Phone a Smarter Friend](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-33-advisor-phone-a-friend.md) - Remember "Phone a Friend" in Who Wants to be a Millionaire? It's like that, but with lower stakes.
- [Episode 76 - Don’t Write Metadata](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-76-dont-write-metadata.md) - Sorry for the clickbait title, but it turns out that Metadata might not matter as much as we think, or at least for the reasons we thought!
- [Claude Clue #32: Cowork vs Claude Code](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-32-cowork-vs-claude-code.md) - A coworker recently asked: should I use Claude Cowork or Claude Code for non-coding work?
- [Episode 75 - What is an MCP?](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-75-what-is-an-mcp.md) - MCP is how you hand an AI real tools. It's coming to ArcGIS. It is one of the best ways to ground AI answers in real data, and you can try it with your own org today.
- [Claude Clue #31: Checkpoints Are Your Undo Button](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-31-checkpoints-undo-button.md) - Claude Code has a feature called checkpoints that can save your bacon.
- [Episode 74 - Would You Let AI Plan Your Vacation?](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-74-would-you-let-ai-plan-your-vacation.md) - Christopher goes to the UC, so Holly takes over to report on letting an AI plan her vacation.
- [Claude Clue #30: Let Claude Grade Its Own Homework](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-30-insights-command-self-evaluation.md) - Ask Claude to grade how well it's been helping you with the /insights command.
- [Episode 73 - Credit Where Credit Is Due](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-73-credit-where-credit-is-due.md) - Come play AI or Not at the Esri UC (booth 436) and win a robot-head keychain!
- [Claude Clue #29: Let Claude Work the Night Shift](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-29-let-claude-work-the-night-shift.md) - Claude Code can run without you!
- [Episode 72 - The Judge Pattern Goes to Washington](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-72-the-judge-pattern-goes-to-washington.md) - To bring Claude Fable 5 back online, Anthropic paired it with a smaller model that screens what you ask and what Fable answers. That's the "judge" pattern!
- [Claude Clue #28: Let Claude See What You're Seeing](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-28-browser-access-chrome-playwright.md) - Claude is surprisingly good at using a web browser!
- [Episode 71 - Ask Better Questions](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-71-ask-better-questions.md) - Educate yourself enough to "kinda get it," then ask good questions, then judge the output.
- [Claude Clue #27: How to learn to use AI](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-27-how-to-learn-to-use-ai.md) - Training for building things with AI seems questionable to me, I prefer to be more hands-on! But there are still lots of things to learn from!
- [Episode 70 - AI or Not?](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-70-ai-or-not.md) - AI-generated and AI-altered images have gotten genuinely, unsettlingly good. That's wildly useful and also dangerous!
- [Claude Clue #26: Running Commands in Your Prompt](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-26-run-commands-mid-prompt.md) - If you've spent any time in Claude Code, you've watched it run its own commands all day: reading files, checking git, running tests.
- [Episode 69 - Wait, what's the difference between a Skill and a Project?](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-69-wait-whats-the-difference-between-a-skill-and-a-project.md) - A Skill is a repeatable task. A Project is reference material. Cowork is a Project that can use your computer. They aren't competing products; they are different places to put your context.
- [Claude Clue #25: Beat the Clock on Your Token Budget](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-25-beat-the-clock-token-budget.md) - Know when your Claude usage is worth more.
- [Episode 68 - Don’t Blame the Robot](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-68-dont-blame-the-robot.md) - Most “AI-driven layoffs” aren’t actually driven by AI. The technology is used as a cover for cuts that were already coming for different reasons. No one wants to admit the real reason, so it is easier to blame the robot.
- [Claude Clue #24: Talk to Your Terminal](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-24-talk-to-your-terminal.md) - If you haven't tried /voice in Claude Code yet, this is your nudge.
- [Episode 67 - It’s not your prompts](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-67-its-not-your-prompts.md) - Use AI for thinking (not deciding), fix the system (not the output), and correct without drama.
- [Claude Clue #23: MCPs Are Just Toolboxes, Not Magic](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-23-mcps-are-just-toolboxes.md) - Claude gets more interesting when you expand what it can touch, and that's where MCPs come in.
- [Episode 66 - Don’t Tell Claude Who to Be](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-66-dont-tell-claude-who-to-be.md) - Tell it what task it's doing and what scope it's working in. The "you are an expert" prompt is mostly cargo cult now; a list of NEVER statements is brittle.
- [Claude Clue #22: Feed Claude More Than Text](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-22-feed-claude-more-than-text.md) - Claude Code can already see images and PDFs—you paste them in with Alt+V on Windows or Ctrl+V on Mac. But it doesn't stop there.
- [Episode 65 - How to tend a codebase](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-65-how-to-tend-a-codebase.md) - I double down on the idea that keeping up with AI-generated code looks a lot like gardening: seeds, soil, water, pruning, weeding, and sometimes pulling up a plant.
- [Claude Clue #21: Say What You Mean. No, Really.](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-21-say-what-you-mean.md) - Claude Opus 4.7 is more literal than 4.6, and Anthropic flagged it directly in the release announcement.
- [Episode 64 - Context is King](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-64-context-is-king.md) - The number one reason folks struggle with AI tools is they don't give the model enough to work with. Context is the cheapest upgrade you can make to any AI workflow today.
- [Claude Clue #20: Effort Is the New Thinking](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-20-effort-is-the-new-thinking.md) - If you've been using Claude Code for a while, you might remember manually toggling between thinking modes or typing 'ultrathink'.
- [Episode 63 - AI in ArcGIS, How to Start](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-63-ai-in-arcgis-how-to-start.md) - Esri now has a whole family of AI assistants built into ArcGIS—Arcade, Pro, Survey123, Item Details, Story Maps, Hub, Documentation, and more. I suggest starting with a workflow you do every week so you can start to learn when to trust the AI tools.
- [Claude Clue #19: Stop Babysitting Claude with AutoMode](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-19-stop-babysitting-claude-automode.md) - Let Claude decide what's safe and what isn't...!
- [Episode 62 - Break The AI](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-61-break-the-ai.md) - I built an 8-bit video game-style AI red teaming game that lets you try to break various chatbots with different guardrails so you can see how it works.
- [Claude Clue #18: Compact, Clear, or Resume: Know Your Options](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-18-compact-clear-resume-context-management.md) - Claude Code now gives you real tools to manage your conversations, and knowing when to use each one matters.
- [Episode 61 - Ask Jaws](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-61-ask-jaws.md) - I built a chatbot for my website using the five-layer guardrail stack from Episode 58. My AI agent wrote the code, then a separate AI agent attacked it. You can try to break it too.
- [Claude Clue #17: Don't Wait! Keep Moving While Claude Works](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-17-background-tasks-btw.md) - Patience is a virtue when working with AI, but sometimes you don't actually have to wait.
- [Episode 60 - Say Hello, Jaws](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-60-say-hello-jaws.md) - I built an autonomous AI agent that runs 24/7 on a Mac Mini, manages my home office, triages my email, helps write content, and improves itself every night at 3 AM. Here's an introduction to how it actually works.
- [Claude Clue #16: Stop Staring and Let Claude Ding You](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-16-stop-hooks-notification-sound.md) - Small automations that fire at specific points in Claude's lifecycle. A simple example: playing a sound!
- [Episode 59 - Poison Pills](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-59-poison-pills.md) - Poison pills are hidden instructions in data your AI consumes. They’re a fun defensive trick for content creators and a serious attack vector if you’re building AI tools that touch external data.
- [Claude Clue #15: Skills Are Just Files Your Model Can Find](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-15-skills-files-model-can-find.md) - A skill is essentially a file that your model can access on demand to tailor its behavior for a specific task.
- [Episode 58 - Guardrails](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-58-guardrails.md) - It takes more than a good system prompt to protect an AI from abuse, and it is worth making it as hard as possible for attackers.
- [Claude Clue #14: Skills Focus, Hooks Enforce](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-14-skills-focus-hooks-enforce.md) - Skills are reusable prompts, hooks are code you can run to stop or alter the model's behavior.
- [Episode 57- We will all be Software Gardeners](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-57-we-will-all-be-software-gardeners.md) - Do you garden? I do, sometimes. I have a raspberry bed that I am proud of. Sometimes I grow a few tomatoes, lettuce, and the occasional pepper.
- [Claude Clue #13: Know Your Limits (And Have a Backup Plan)](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-13-know-your-limits-backup-plan.md) - Here's a fun way to start your work week: burning through 80% of your weekly Claude usage by Tuesday morning!
- [Episode 56 - The Levels of AI Assisted Software Development](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-56-the-levels-of-ai-assisted-software-development.md) - There are four levels of AI coding available today, from fancy autocomplete to full agentic engineering. The interesting stuff starts at Level 2. And Level 3 is where it gets weird.
- [Claude Clue #12: Let Claude Spawn More Claudes](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-12-spawn-multiple-claudes-orchestration.md) - Claude Code can spin up multiple Claudes to work in parallel, and it is genuinely one of those features that feels a bit like magic!
- [Episode 55 - Esri Releases Agent Builder tools in the ArcGIS SDK for JavaScript 5.0](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-55-esri-releases-agent-builder-tools-in-the-arcgis-sdk-for-javascript-5-0.md) - I built a web app called Palm Springs Eats AI, where you can chat with a map of restaurants near the convention center.
- [Claude Clue #11: What Hides Behind the '/'](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-11-what-hides-behind-the-slash.md) - The `/` menu in Claude Code has quietly become a treasure chest.
- [Episode 54 - I Got a Chrome Extension Built in Under an Hour](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-54-i-got-a-chrome-extension-built-in-under-an-hour.md) - TL;DR - A friend built me a Chrome extension that generates alt text for images using the surrounding page content for context. It took less than an hour.
- [Claude Clue #10: Give Your Codebase a Health Checkup](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-10-codebase-health-checkup.md) - Your codebase accumulates tech debt. It doesn't matter if humans wrote it, AI wrote it, or some messy combination of both.
- [Episode 53 - Building an Experience Builder Widget with Claude Code](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-53-building-an-experience-builder-widget-with-claude-code.md) - I demo how to build an Experience Builder widget using Claude Code and it works!
- [Claude Clue #9: Let Your Models Fight Each Other](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-9-let-your-models-fight-each-other.md) - One of the most useful things I've found is putting models in adversarial roles against each other!
- [Episode 52 - The Best of Year One ✨](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-52-the-best-of-year-one.md) - This week, to celebrate one year of AEH, Holly and I review our favorite posts and I make some comments about what it is like writing a newsletter every week!
- [Claude Clue #8: Train Your Model on Today, Not Yesterday](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-8-train-your-model-on-today.md) - Claude's training data has a cutoff date, which means the libraries it "remembers" are frozen in time—security flaws and all.
- [Episode 51 - Building Spiel - A Voice Dictation App](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-51-building-spiel.md) - I used Claude Code to build a voice dictation app called Spiel. It uses OpenAI's Whisper for transcription, has an optional AI cleanup step with a prompt that I can control, and it only took me one evening to make!
- [Claude Clue #7: Tell Claude What Day It Is](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-7-tell-claude-what-day-it-is.md) - It's ridiculously frustrating when AI models get the date wrong, and they do it all the time. Everyone's seen it.
- [Episode 50 - Building GeoScribble](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-50-building-geoscribble.md) - Join me while I build GeoScribble, a draw the country from memory app!
- [Claude Clue #6: Your Context Window Is Already 30% Full](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-6-context-window-already-full.md) - Ever wonder why your Claude conversation seems to "forget" things faster than you expected?
- [Episode 49 - How I Write Apps](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-49-how-i-write-apps.md) - This is a story about how I build apps. It's about a process I've been refining that enables quality and speed. I want to walk you through exactly what I did because it's repeatable, and I think more people can and should be building prototypes before meetings instead of just talking about ideas.
- [Claude Clue #5: Sometimes Pinky Is Enough](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-5-sometimes-pinky-is-enough.md) - Not every task needs the Brain.
- [Episode 48 - Pass the Note](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-48-pass-the-note.md) - Large Language Models don’t actually "remember" your conversations. Every message you send includes the entire conversation so far. When that gets too long, applications have to make choices about what to keep, and sometimes that goes sideways.
- [Claude Clue #4: Your Data Manager Might Be the Weak Link](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-4-upgrade-your-data-manager.md) - Claude Code isn't just one model—it's multiple models working together.
- [Episode 47 - The Caroling Conifer](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-47-the-caroling-conifer.md) - This is what happens when you let an engineer use AI to try to play Jingle Bells. Spoiler: it's bad. But also kind of wonderful?
- [Claude Clue #3: Keep the Golden Thread](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-3-keep-the-golden-thread.md) - When you're working with a large file or a sprawling context, Claude can lose the plot—not because it's incapable, but because there's too much.
- [Episode 46 - What is this a map of?](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-46-what-is-this-a-map-of.md) - New year, new tool! Our first episode of 2026 tells the story of how I built the Accessible Map Agent, a new way to make maps understandable for everyone.
- [Claude Clue #2: Stop Commanding, Start Checkpointing](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-2-stop-commanding-start-checkpointing.md) - Most of us learned to interact with computers through search engines—type a command, get a result. So we bring that same energy to Claude: "Give me...
- [Episode 45 - AEH Wrapped 2025](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-45-aeh-wrapped-2025.md) - My dentist sent me a Wrapped this year. Apparently, I was in the top 15% of flossers in their practice...
- [Claude Clue #1: Start by Letting Claude Ask the Questions](https://christophermoravec.com/claude-clues/claude-clue-1-let-claude-ask-questions.md) - Before you dive into your next coding session with Claude, take a breath. The secret to a productive session isn't cramming everything into one per...
- [Episode 44 - Hello, Computer](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-44-hello-computer.md) - I've been talking to my computer. Like, out loud. Full conversations. I use the dictation feature on my MacBook to tell Claude what I want instead of typing it, and I can't believe it took me this long to figure this out.
- [Episode 43 - Draw Me a Red Line Around …](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-43-draw-me-a-red-line-around.md) - You can send satellite imagery to an LLM, ask it to "draw a red box around every swimming pool," and then extract those red boxes as vector features. No GPU required. No domain-specific training. Just an API call and some image processing.
- [Episode 42 - All the ways to classify imagery in ArcGIS with AI](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-42-all-the-ways-to-classify-imagery-in-arcgis-with-ai.md) - I try to explain the different AI tools in ArcGIS that can classify or extract information from imagery.
- [Episode 41 - Using AI to Take the Temperature of the Room](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-41-using-ai-to-take-the-temperature-of-the-room.md) - This week I make an AI powered thermometer to take the temperature of conversation in a room! Perfect for Thanksgiving politics discussions.
- [Episode 40 - A Story of AI Friends](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-40-a-story-of-ai-friends.md) - This week, Holly takes the wheel and describes her AI Story: How it started and how it's going.
- [Episode 39 - GeoAI vs. The Large Language Model: A Tale of Two AIs](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-39-geoai-vs-the-large-language-model-a-tale-of-two-ais.md) - This week I recap a presentation I did walking through different ways you can use AI and GIS today.
- [Episode 38 - The Arbiter](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-38-the-arbiter.md) - This week I introduce The Arbiter, our AI restaurant assigner that was the best team building and educational event I've ever done.
- [Episode 37 - The Origin of ✨ (aka sparkles)](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-37-the-origin-of-sparkles.md) - In my continuing effort to squeeze AI content from our company retreat, I create an AI-Powered timer. It is both as annoying and as funny as you would expect.
- [Episode 36- AI-powered Out of Office](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-36-ai-powered-out-of-office.md) - As promised, I plan to squeeze as much AI content as possible out of our company retreat, and next up is building an AI-powered out-of-office responder.
- [Episode 35 - AI Takes the Wheel](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-35-ai-takes-the-wheel.md) - This week we look at how far self driving cars have come by looking at my experience this week driving a semi-automated car around for our company retreat.
- [Episode 34 - Bob Ross is back and specializes in… Excel?](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-34-bob-ross-is-back-and-specializes-in-excel.md) - Sora2 means that deepfakes are easier than ever, making the possibility of misinformation more widespread too. Sure, making Bob Ross paint Excel is fun, but if someone can make Bob Ross talk about Excel, imagine what they could make YOU talk about, even if you don’t want to.
- [Episode 33 - Trust But Verif-AI](https://christophermoravec.com/trust-but-verif-ai.md) - Two AIs are better than one - If we use multiple models, we can obtain different interpretations that we combine to yield a more reliable answer.
- [Episode 32 - Building a Fantasy Map Machine](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-32-building-a-fantasy-map-machine.md) - I built a system to help us collect information at conference booths in a fun and engaging way—building you a custom fantasy map.
- [Episode 31 - Why do models make stuff up?](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-31-why-do-models-make-stuff-up.md) - The term of art for AI is called hallucinations, but I prefer to stick with Make Shit Up. The training incentives are flawed; we have been training models to hallucinate because they score higher on tests by guessing incorrectly than by admitting they don’t know.
- [Episode 30 - Don’t be a Secret Cyborg](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-30-dont-be-a-secret-cyborg.md) - We need a culture where it is okay to admit to using an AI and celebrate it, all while keeping the human component in mind. Even if AI models don’t improve beyond their current state, we already face numerous issues, anxieties, and superpowers!
- [Episode 29 - AIs don’t learn, but they sure look like they do](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-29-ais-dont-learn-but-they-sure-look-like-they-do.md) - LLMs do not learn on the fly, their training is compute-intensive and cannot currently be done dynamically. Instead, they can recall messages from previous conversations, making them appear to have learned things about you.
- [Episode 28 - Google’s AlphaEarth Changes GIS, a little](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-28-googles-alphaearth-changes-gis-a-little.md) - AlphaEarth is a set of pre-computed embeddings across the entire Earth (over time) that makes it possible to search for similar locations. But what does that mean for GIS?
- [Episode 27 - AI Is the Magic Genie](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-27-ai-is-the-magic-genie.md) - AI is like a magic genie, incredibly powerful, but deeply literal.
- [Episode 26 - An AI by any other name (but please pick one)](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-26-an-ai-by-any-other-name-but-please-pick-one.md) - I wasn't going to write about GPT-5 this week, but since it's all the internet can talk about, I guess I’ll join in. My hot take is this: It isn’t significantly better than the previous models.
- [Episode 25 - How I Use AI to Edit My Writing](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-25-how-i-use-ai-to-edit-my-writing.md) - TL;DR: Ask for feedback! This lets you shorten your editing cycle without asking an AI to write it for you. That keeps it your original work, but you get it done faster and with higher quality.
- [Episode 24 - AI Deleted my Database](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-24-ai-deleted-my-database.md) - TL;DR: Even the smartest AI agents can nuke prod—treat them like junior devs, fence them off from production, and Back Up × 3.
- [Episode 23 - AI Wins a Gold Star](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-23-ai-wins-a-gold-star.md) - Google's AI wins a Gold Medal in a mathematics competition. What does this really mean?
- [Episode 22 - AEH visits the Esri UC](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-22-aeh-visits-the-esri-uc.md) - This week, I attended the Esri UC in San Diego. Let's take a quick look at where Esri is building AI and what folks think about it!
- [Episode 21 - AI of the Beholder: Crafting a Civil War Book Cover](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-21-ai-of-the-beholder-crafting-a-civil-war-book-cover.md) - Our first guest post! Holly, dymaptic's COO, talks about her journey helping her husband design a book cover using AI!
- [Episode 20 - AI Generates Maps](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-20-ai-generates-maps.md) - Happy 4th of July. Let's take the week off by looking at some silly AI generated maps.
- [Episode 19 - AI & Copyright Law & You](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-19-ai-copyright-law-you.md) - When you use AI, what can you copyright? A dive into the US Copyright Office's report on AI—and a look at how it affects me and our work at dymaptic.
- [Episode 18 - Sorry, I can't help with that](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-18-sorry-i-cant-help-with-that.md) - AI chatbots can go rogue, creating policies that don't exist, or promising refunds. What can you do to protect your systems? Build a Policy Layer!
- [Episode 17 - I build an AI-generated AI-generated art prompt guessing game](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-17-i-build-an-ai-generated-ai-generated-art-prompt-guessing-game.md) - I’ve developed a lightweight AI-assisted workflow that allows me to go from concept to MVP in hours. This week, I used it to build a live, multiplayer image guessing game.
- [Episode 16 - AI Arcade Showdown](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-16-ai-arcade-showdown.md) - What happens when you pit two AIs against each other in a battle of browser game development? Spoiler: one of them forgets how to lose.
- [Episode 15 - CSI: Kitchen—Reverse Engineering a Recipe with ChatGPT](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-15-csi-kitchen-reverse-engineering-a-recipe-with-chatgpt.md) - CSI in the title, Law & Order in this GIF and this whole thing is more like Food Network. 🤷 Can AI Reverse Engineer a Recipe? Also, Christopher finally learned to spell R-E-C-I-P-E!
- [Episode 14 - My AI Doesn’t Record Action Items. It Paints the Vibe.](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-14-my-ai-doesnt-record-action-items-it-paints-the-vibe.md) - Way back in ~~checks watch~~ September 2023, I created the WhisperFrame for my living room, which generated art about our discussions.
- [Episode 13 -  How Many Calories are in this Cat?](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-13-how-many-calories-are-in-this-cat.md) - Prologue Last week, I got AI to help me cook dinner. This week, I'm getting it to judge my dinner. Let's talk about counting calories. You've probably done it before—maybe to lose weight, gain muscle, or just figure out why your pants "shrunk" (spoiler: they didn't). When you're staring down a burr…
- [Episode 12 - Wait, ChatGPT Made this Recipe?!?](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-12-wait-chatgpt-made-this-recipe.md) - It was 5 p.m. The end of another day of back-to-back meetings. The kind that drain your soul and leave nothing but empty coffee cups and half-scribbled notes in their wake. I wasn't sure what the evening was going to hold for me, but I was about to find out.
- [Episode 11 - The Final Chunkdown - Building Smarter Summaries](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-11-the-final-chunkdown-building-smarter-summaries.md) - The final episode in my mini-series about building a blog summary generation tool.
- [Episode 10 - What Your Content Looks Like in Embedding Space](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-10-what-your-content-looks-like-in-embedding-space.md) - Yesterday, April 24th, 2025, I gave the closing keynote at the GIS in Action conference in Portland, OR. It was a blast, even if my AI Powered slides were not on their best game. Don't Panic! It's just AI! This is part 3 of 4 posts on building an AI-Powered Summaraizer tool: 1. Episode 8 - One Summ…
- [Episode 9 - How to Find Content like you Find Places on a Map](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-9-how-to-find-content-like-you-find-places-on-a-map.md) - Part 2 of a series about building a blog summarizer tool.
- [Episode 8 - One Summary to Rule Them All](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-8-one-summary-to-rule-them-all.md) - Part 1 of a series about how to build a summarizer of Blog posts.
- [Episode 7 - Dear HAL, is This Drain Name Something I can say to my Mom?](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-7-dear-hal-is-this-drain-name-something-i-can-say-to-my-mom.md) - A quick look at an old idea I had a few years ago to use LLMs to filter or protect input data. Also a pretty good try by ChatGPT to make a four panel comic.
- [Episode 6 – Where I Teach You to Build a Losing March Madness Bracket](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-6-where-i-teach-you-to-build-a-losing-march-madness-bracket.md) - In this episode, I show you how I used AI to make "average" March Madness brackets. Spoiler, they are not very good, but I learned how good AI is at impersonating a human for repetitive or tedious tasks.
- [Episode 5 - From Words to Code (aka Coding by Vibe)](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-5-from-words-to-code-aka-coding-by-vibe.md) - In Episode 5 we are going to look at how we think, how the web has evolved, and the shifts that are happening as AI and LLMs take on some aspects of software development – and explore what’s left for the Humans (spoiler: the fun parts, I think).
- [Episode 4 - Disposable Apps](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-4-disposable-apps.md) - Esri Developer and Technology Summit A quick shout out to everyone who attended my packed talk at the Esri Developer Summit this week! In that session, we built, from scratch (in about 15 minutes), a very simple DnD Character Building tool. It was very simple, but also showcased how a high-quality…
- [Episode 3 - Building a Thanksgiving Dish Assigner](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-3-building-a-thanksgiving-dish-assigner.md) - Welcome to Episode 3! This week, we will examine our first real-world coding example to build a Thanksgiving Dish Assigner. Yes, this was a real thing, that was really used!
- [Episode 2 - Fuzzy Data Matching](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-2-fuzzy-data-matching.md) - Welcome to Episode 2 where we complain about data quality and discuss how AI can help clean and match inconsistent data—a technique I call Fuzzy Data Matching.
- [Episode 1 - A Stranger in an Airport](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-1-a-stranger-in-an-airport-2.md) - I find AI to be very useful. It isn't always perfect, and sometimes it's just completely wrong, but even so, using AI helps me work faster and improve the quality of my output.
- [Episode 0 - There Has to Be a First Post](https://christophermoravec.com/episode-0-there-has-to-be-a-first-post.md) - My name is Christopher Moravec, and I’m glad you decided to join me on this newsletter ride. I am an expert at trying new things and learning new skills. I'm going to share my thoughts and experiences here. Right now, my focus is on using AI. I think that AI (in this context, when I say AI, I mean…

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