ArticlesNov 10, 20269 min read
Two Operators Can Think Differently and Meet the Same Goal
Plants judge operators by results within limits. Agents should be judged the same way.
Pieter van SchalkwykBLOG
Insights & Updates
Latest thinking on agentic operations, industrial AI, and building trust in autonomous systems.
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Pieter van Schalkwyk
ArticlesNov 9, 20267 min read
You Can't Optimize an Egg Into a Bird
The objective of transformation was never a bigger egg. It was always the bird. A transformation, by definition, ends with something of a different kind than what you started with. The egg does not survive the process.
Pieter van Schalkwyk
ArticlesNov 6, 20269 min read
Operators, Not Creators
Industrial autonomy needs less creativity, not more. It also needs to stop betting on the model.
Pieter van Schalkwyk
ArticlesNov 5, 202610 min read
You Should Rent the Model. You Must Own Everything Around It.
Satya Nadella argues that the lasting advantage in AI sits in the learning loop a company builds around the model: the system that holds how the company works and improves every time it runs. He is right.
Pieter van Schalkwyk
ArticlesNov 4, 202611 min read
Who Controls the Orchestration Controls the Plant
Gartner just called the placement of agent orchestration the most consequential architecture decision of the decade. In industry, the stakes are physical.
Pieter van Schalkwyk
ArticlesNov 3, 20269 min read
"Software Doesn't Reflect." What an Operator LLM Agent Actually Does in an Observe, Reflect, Plan, Act Loop
I hear this from skeptics a lot, and they are half right. The answer is grounded in cognitive science: the reasoning is real but non-deterministic, and the decision belongs to a deterministic layer.
Pieter van Schalkwyk
ArticlesNov 2, 202622 min read
The harness is the product: how XMPro avoids frontier-model lock-in
Nate Jones's GLM 5.2 video is really about model lock-in Nate B.
Pieter van Schalkwyk
ArticlesOct 30, 202610 min read
Agents Are Context Hungry
The better the agent, the more it demands of the context beneath it. Build that foundation now, open and governed, before you scale the agents on top of it.
Pieter van Schalkwyk
ArticlesOct 29, 20268 min read
You Don't Want an Operator With Four PhDs
An engineer at a large manufacturer showed me a dashboard last week. Sharp work, built fast, and he was rightly proud of it.
Pieter van Schalkwyk
ArticlesOct 28, 202610 min read
Generative Development for Trustworthy Operations at Scale
Vibe coding is cool. Engineers can turn an idea into a working interface quickly, put it in front of colleagues and show what is possible.
Pieter van Schalkwyk
ArticlesOct 27, 20267 min read
Agent Skills Are the New Spreadsheets
A week or so ago I joined a call with the IT division of a large organization who thought they had figured out its agent strategy. They walked me through it with some pride: AI assistants loaded with skill files written by their subject matter experts, ready to answer questions across the business.
Pieter van Schalkwyk
ArticlesOct 26, 20269 min read
Australia Cannot Afford to Fall Behind on AI
Australia cannot sustain a high-wage economy without becoming more productive. Yet our debate about artificial intelligence keeps returning to the jobs it might replace.
Pieter van Schalkwyk
ArticlesOct 23, 202626 min read
Decision Engineering Comes Before Agent Design
List the decisions first. Then decide, for each one, how it should be made, who holds the authority and what evidence it needs.
Pieter van Schalkwyk