FROM THE TRENCHES Issue №288

Practical decisions for AI and software

Technical guides to choose models, verify software and plan delivery.

Latest articles

New comparisons, practical guides and engineering lessons.

Meterless context stack connects H-MEM, World Model, Markovian reasoning and Scout around an AI agent AI & Agents

Meterless Review 2026: Is This AI Agent Context Layer Ready?

Fact-checked buyer review of H-MEM, World Model, Markovian and Scout, including modeled token claims, license boundaries, production gaps and a two-week pilot.

Six software agencies in Tyrol compared by project fit Business & Regulation

Software Agencies in Tyrol Compared 2026

A disclosed, official-source comparison of Wavect, IDUS, CreativeSystems, styleflasher, Frankford's IT and westSite by project fit, without a universal ranking.

AI agent SLA schedule connecting measurable task outcomes, latency, human handoff, audit traces and contractual remedies Business & Regulation

AI Agent SLA Template: Accuracy, Latency, Human Handoff and Auditability

A copyable procurement schedule with formulas for task success, material hallucinations, tool use, p95 latency, handoff, dependency failure, model changes, trace retention, severity and remedies.

Nemotron 3.5 ASR turns multilingual audio streams into punctuated text behind a self-hosted production gate AI & Agents

NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 ASR: Is Free Self-Hosted STT Ready for Voice Agents?

A buyer-focused review of the 80 ms claim, 40-locale caveat, H100 concurrency economics, OpenMDW license, Whisper trade-offs and a measurable production pilot.

Claude Code and OpenCode compared by token overhead, cache cost, team controls and accepted-task economics AI & Agents

Claude Code vs OpenCode: Which Costs Less for a Team in 2026?

Claude Code vs OpenCode with an October 2026 benchmark snapshot, cache-pricing exceptions, historical evidence and a team cost-per-accepted-task checklist.

Kimi K3 API production review for European companies AI & Agents

Kimi K3 for EU Companies: API Cost, Data Risk, and a Pilot Plan

A buyer-focused review of K3 pricing, independent performance, Singapore data location, conflicting public terms, API integration limits, self-host reality and a measured two-week production pilot.

Mesh LLM splits one large model into contiguous layer stages across three computers AI & Agents

Mesh LLM Review: Can One Large LLM Run Across Multiple Computers?

A buyer-focused review of distributed local inference: how Skippy pools memory through layer stages, why speed does not scale with capacity, what the project's benchmarks prove and how to run a safe commercial pilot.

EU AI vendor security questionnaire with 45 evidence and contract checks Business & Regulation

EU AI Vendor Security Questionnaire: 45 Questions Before You Sign

An evidence-led AI procurement checklist covering training, retention, subprocessors, regions, logs, permissions, model changes, incidents, evals, deletion, exit and EU AI Act roles. Includes a multilingual spreadsheet.

DACH AI adoption benchmark comparing Austria, Germany and Switzerland in 2026 Business & Regulation

DACH AI Adoption Benchmark 2026: What SMEs Put Into Production

Source-backed adoption and use-case data for Austria, Germany and Switzerland, plus the production, budget, ownership and shelfware metrics public surveys still do not measure.

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