Matt Collins
@mattcollins.net
CTO, Product Builder & AI/LLM Enthusiast • London, UK
www.mattcollins.net
www.mattcollins.net
Which Nested Data Format Do LLMs Understand Best? JSON vs. YAML vs. XML vs. Markdown www.improvingagents.com/blog/best-ne...
Which Nested Data Format Do LLMs Understand Best? JSON vs. YAML vs. XML vs. Markdown
We tested LLMs from three different providers on nested data in JSON, YAML, XML, and Markdown formats. Two models performed best with YAML, while Markdown was the most token-efficient format.
www.improvingagents.com
October 14, 2025 at 3:09 PM
Which Nested Data Format Do LLMs Understand Best? JSON vs. YAML vs. XML vs. Markdown www.improvingagents.com/blog/best-ne...
How should you format tables of data you're passing to an LLM? www.improvingagents.com/blog/best-in...
Testing JSON, CSV, YAML and More: The Best Table Input Format for LLMs
We benchmarked 11 data formats, including JSON, CSV, YAML, XML, and Markdown, to see which LLMs understand best. Results reveal surprising accuracy and token cost trade-offs.
www.improvingagents.com
September 30, 2025 at 2:44 PM
How should you format tables of data you're passing to an LLM? www.improvingagents.com/blog/best-in...
AI assistance can significantly _improve_ the quality and security of the software we develop; it just depends how we use it. (And, over time, the tools are going to have more good practices built in.)
September 8, 2025 at 2:55 PM
AI assistance can significantly _improve_ the quality and security of the software we develop; it just depends how we use it. (And, over time, the tools are going to have more good practices built in.)
Some fascinating thoughts from Klarna's CEO here about their approach to enterprise IT.
Is AI tipping the balance away from best-in-class domain-specific SaaS towards 'all-in-one' SaaS?
And does 'opinionated' SaaS encourage good processes or shoehorn orgs into clumsy ones?
x.com/klarnaseb/st...
Is AI tipping the balance away from best-in-class domain-specific SaaS towards 'all-in-one' SaaS?
And does 'opinionated' SaaS encourage good processes or shoehorn orgs into clumsy ones?
x.com/klarnaseb/st...
Sebastian Siemiatkowski on X: "Yes, we did shut down Salesforce a year ago, as we have many SaaS providers—an internal estimate is about 1,200 SaaS shut down. No, I don't think it is the end of Salesforce; might be the opposite. Here is what actually happened and how/why we originally intended to NOT share" / X
Yes, we did shut down Salesforce a year ago, as we have many SaaS providers—an internal estimate is about 1,200 SaaS shut down. No, I don't think it is the end of Salesforce; might be the opposite. Here is what actually happened and how/why we originally intended to NOT share
x.com
March 4, 2025 at 11:47 AM
Some fascinating thoughts from Klarna's CEO here about their approach to enterprise IT.
Is AI tipping the balance away from best-in-class domain-specific SaaS towards 'all-in-one' SaaS?
And does 'opinionated' SaaS encourage good processes or shoehorn orgs into clumsy ones?
x.com/klarnaseb/st...
Is AI tipping the balance away from best-in-class domain-specific SaaS towards 'all-in-one' SaaS?
And does 'opinionated' SaaS encourage good processes or shoehorn orgs into clumsy ones?
x.com/klarnaseb/st...
How should software product development teams be using AI today?
What’s now a no-brainer?
And what’s not worth it? (Or too dangerous?)
My current thoughts: www.mattcollins.net/2025/01/how-...
What’s now a no-brainer?
And what’s not worth it? (Or too dangerous?)
My current thoughts: www.mattcollins.net/2025/01/how-...
January 31, 2025 at 2:42 PM
How should software product development teams be using AI today?
What’s now a no-brainer?
And what’s not worth it? (Or too dangerous?)
My current thoughts: www.mattcollins.net/2025/01/how-...
What’s now a no-brainer?
And what’s not worth it? (Or too dangerous?)
My current thoughts: www.mattcollins.net/2025/01/how-...
OpenAI have published a handy demo repo showing how you can build advanced realtime voice agents using their API.
If you're a developer interested in experimenting with this stuff it's a nice, quick way to get started. (Fun, too!)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqaY...
If you're a developer interested in experimenting with this stuff it's a nice, quick way to get started. (Fun, too!)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqaY...
How to Run and Customize Real-Time Voice Agents with OpenAI's Demo Code
YouTube video by Matt Collins
www.youtube.com
January 17, 2025 at 4:15 PM
OpenAI have published a handy demo repo showing how you can build advanced realtime voice agents using their API.
If you're a developer interested in experimenting with this stuff it's a nice, quick way to get started. (Fun, too!)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqaY...
If you're a developer interested in experimenting with this stuff it's a nice, quick way to get started. (Fun, too!)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqaY...
If you're building AI agents, the smolagents library from Hugging Face (released a couple of weeks ago) is one to be aware of. It's intriguing to see that they've chosen to emphasise agents that write their actions in code (CodeAct-style) rather than as JSON-like snippets. github.com/huggingface/...
GitHub - huggingface/smolagents: 🤗 smolagents: a barebones library for agents. Agents write python code to call tools and orchestrate other agents.
🤗 smolagents: a barebones library for agents. Agents write python code to call tools and orchestrate other agents. - huggingface/smolagents
github.com
January 12, 2025 at 10:56 PM
If you're building AI agents, the smolagents library from Hugging Face (released a couple of weeks ago) is one to be aware of. It's intriguing to see that they've chosen to emphasise agents that write their actions in code (CodeAct-style) rather than as JSON-like snippets. github.com/huggingface/...
My little writing productivity tool, Flowdrafter, gets a mention in today's edition of The Neuron (which apparently goes to 500,000+ people) as one of their 'Treats To Try'. 🙂 www.theneurondaily.com/p/new-year-n...
😺 New year, new AI?
PLUS: Google's 9-hour prompt course in ~20 minutes (or less)...
www.theneurondaily.com
January 6, 2025 at 11:43 AM
My little writing productivity tool, Flowdrafter, gets a mention in today's edition of The Neuron (which apparently goes to 500,000+ people) as one of their 'Treats To Try'. 🙂 www.theneurondaily.com/p/new-year-n...
Based on an idea from Claude (AI), I created a little writing tool in a few hours using V0 (AI) and Cursor (AI). Rather surprisingly, it's currently #1 on Product Hunt! www.producthunt.com/posts/flowdr...
January 3, 2025 at 3:38 PM
Based on an idea from Claude (AI), I created a little writing tool in a few hours using V0 (AI) and Cursor (AI). Rather surprisingly, it's currently #1 on Product Hunt! www.producthunt.com/posts/flowdr...
Reposted by Matt Collins
Based on seeing lots of companies, 98% of what people are calling AI agents are not what the AI labs would call agents. They are usually structured document retrieval systems with a prompt or two for summaries, there is very little control or decision-making given to the AI, very little AI planning
November 15, 2024 at 5:28 PM
Based on seeing lots of companies, 98% of what people are calling AI agents are not what the AI labs would call agents. They are usually structured document retrieval systems with a prompt or two for summaries, there is very little control or decision-making given to the AI, very little AI planning
An interesting CTO role for someone. labour.org.uk/about-us/wor...
Current vacancy: Chief Technology Officer – The Labour Party
Salary: Competitive Location: Head Office – London Duration: Permanent The Labour Party is looking to recruit a Chief Technology Officer. The post-holder will be responsible for developing and impleme...
labour.org.uk
November 11, 2024 at 4:48 PM
An interesting CTO role for someone. labour.org.uk/about-us/wor...
6 AI tools I've been impressed by lately:
www.blinkshot.io - generate images in realtime
www.napkin.ai - get visuals from your text
www.flowvoice.ai - Mac app for fast voice input
notebooklm.google - docs to podcast episodes
chatgpt.com - advanced voice mode
v0.dev - generate web UI
How about you?
www.blinkshot.io - generate images in realtime
www.napkin.ai - get visuals from your text
www.flowvoice.ai - Mac app for fast voice input
notebooklm.google - docs to podcast episodes
chatgpt.com - advanced voice mode
v0.dev - generate web UI
How about you?
November 8, 2024 at 10:36 AM
6 AI tools I've been impressed by lately:
www.blinkshot.io - generate images in realtime
www.napkin.ai - get visuals from your text
www.flowvoice.ai - Mac app for fast voice input
notebooklm.google - docs to podcast episodes
chatgpt.com - advanced voice mode
v0.dev - generate web UI
How about you?
www.blinkshot.io - generate images in realtime
www.napkin.ai - get visuals from your text
www.flowvoice.ai - Mac app for fast voice input
notebooklm.google - docs to podcast episodes
chatgpt.com - advanced voice mode
v0.dev - generate web UI
How about you?