Doug Turnbull

Optimizing Search & Data Processing with Self-hosted SLMs In this Lightning Lesson, Daniel will share a preview of Superlinked Inference Engine - an open source software for self-hosting Small Language Models in your own cloud. Cut 95%+ of your managed LLM A...

Tomorrow one of the most popular speakers Trey and I have on Maven

Deploying small language models to help with search relevance

maven.com/p/de2d33/opt...

AI-Powered Search: Modern Retrieval for Humans & Agents by Trey Grainger and Doug Turnbull on Maven Learn the latest AI Search skills with the authors of "AI-Powered Search"

AI Powered Search - March edition - coming up in little more than 2 weeks

maven.com/search-schoo...

Personalized Relevance with VLMs and Sparse Vectors In today's data explosion, delivering personalized search results at scale is crucial. This talk introduces sparse tensors for compact representations, shows how VLMs mimic human visual processing to ...

Tomorrow Tuesday Trey and I host Piotr Kobziakowski who will be discussing personalization with sparse vector retrieval and visual language models

maven.com/p/b5ee84/per...

Cheat at Search with Agents by Doug Turnbull on Maven Rethink search to put tireless agents at work for human users

First class starts today, then prices go up to $1600 for late entrants at 12:30 PM ET

maven.com/softwaredoug...

Avoiding expensive AI surprises with LiteLLM LLMs have lowered the barrier to experimentation, but raised the risk of silent, unbounded cost. For individual engineers and small teams, the gap between “enterprise best practices” and day-to-day re...

Thursday I'm hosting Ewan Nisbet who will share his learnings using LiteLLM to control costs

maven.com/p/e28c57/avo...

A digital illustration of a groundhog all dressed up in fancy morning dress: big shiny top hat, cutaway coat with tails, bow tie, waistcoat with watch chain, pinstriped pants and shoes with spats. He’s standing on a hillside covered in yellowish green grass. It’ The sky is gray and hazy and there’s a bare tree in the distance. There are patches of snow on the ground and crocuses coming up. He’s casting a long shadow forward within which is lettering reading ‘Maybe it will happen today’.

I'm up for naming and shaming companies/orgs. with ample $$$$$ who have created a safety hazard w/ untouched sidewalks

* The Flats on West Main
* Bank of America on the Corner
* UVa, who mostly did great, for RBB btwn Grove & King Sts. still untouched

Who/where else?

I started submitting snow removal violations on the My Cville app this morning for the first time this week. If kids are going to go to school on Monday we need all these sidewalks cleared.

A parenting lesson I forget/relearn over and over:. When I spend time outdoors, my kids (on average) spend more time outdoors.

We need free range parents to have free range kids.

Cheat at Search with Agents by Doug Turnbull on Maven Rethink search to put tireless agents at work for human users

Signup here

maven.com/softwaredoug...

Cheat at Search with Agents starts NEXT WEEK. Prices go up Monday

YouTube video by Doug Turnbull Will agents replace search teams? (a discussion)

Great chat with Daniel Tunkelang on Agentic Search

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGnW...

Doug Turnbull I share search tips, blog articles, and free events I'm hosting about the search+retreval industry, vector databases, information retrieval and more.

softwaredoug.kit.com

I love models implemented in spreadsheets. Fun things coming on the newsletter

What happens when housing is cheap in red states, but blue states restrict it

Coding becomes like writing.

It's a skill. But its accessible to everyone. Very few people do it directly as a job, but everyone does it as part of their job.

Learn about a specific market / problem space and make coding (and writing) a part of your job.

Cheat at Search with Agents by Doug Turnbull on Maven Rethink search to put tireless agents at work for human users

I'm trying to wrap my head around agents impact on search. Join me as we explore together.

Feb 2nd, prices go up. Feb 9th last day to signup

maven.com/softwaredoug...

Will agents replace search teams? A discussion Exhilarating and terrifying - that's AIs potential on the search industry. We all feel it. Can we plan for it? For our career? For our teams? Depending who you ask either nothing or everything is cha...

Friday Daniel Tunkenlang and I will host a discussion with an intentionally hyperbolic title

Hope to see you there!

maven.com/p/66212a/wil...

There were very few search rerankers specifically for e-commerce queries.

Until now, that is.

RexRerankers by Walmart Tech MLEs is a suite of 5 SOTA rerankers ranging from 17M to 0.6B parameters.

Details in 🧵:

Get Daily Search Tips 📬 Get practical search and RAG tips delivered to your inbox

softwaredoug.com/daily-search...

Reminder I do daily search tips via email

Ralph, too, needs a test train split When we think of AI coding as ML modeling, we enable AI to solve deeper, more difficult, and less black and white problems.

AI Coding needs test train splits

softwaredoug.com/blog/2026/01...

Cheat at Search Essentials: BM25 + Lexical It's often said with chat interfaces and RAG, search has become the hard problem. Search has a long history and means more than vector databases. Let's learn how BM25 and similar techniques compliment...

Tomorrow Cheat at Search Essentials is starting up

Lexical and BM25 search

maven.com/p/38fdf5/che...

RAG isn't a vector search problem RAG is often framed as a vector search problem, turning it into a black box of embeddings and magic. This lesson shows how RAG doesn’t have to be opaque – starting from traditional search, you can inc...

Hey in ~1.5 hrs, @jnbrymn.bsky.social will talk about why RAG is not a vector search problem

maven.com/p/93a8f0/rag...

Roaring bitmaps have always inspired me in this kind of stuff, surprised its not in more search engines

I have coded since 4th grade and I’ve never had more of an emotional rollercoaster about my identity as a “programmer” as in the last year given how good AI has gotten. I think antirezs post gives me the most hope

antirez.com/news/158

Free course: Cheat at Search Essentials A free introductory search course for anyone who wants better search without all the hard work

A reminder my Cheat at Search Essentials course returns a week from Tuesday

softwaredoug.com/blog/2025/12...

Semantic Search Without Embeddings Pay attention to the other ways to model similarity and filter search results

"Semantic search" doesn't always mean embeddings. There are many ways of representing similarity spaces that have different pros and cons.

LLMs actually make many non-embedding approaches easier

softwaredoug.com/blog/2026/01...

Tuning the Tuners-Can agents automate OpenSearchs relevance? We all know coding can be semi-automated. But can search relevance tuning? Using the Strands SDK, Eric recently finished a project to build a multi-agent system to tune this incredibly complex system...

Friday! We'll hear from @dep4b.bsky.social who will teach us about using agents to tune OpenSearch Relevance

maven.com/p/012bcb/tun...

Fast Fashion and Emissions: What’s the Link? | Earth.Org Aside from polluting waterways, fabric proction is one of the primary causes of greenhouse gas emissions in the fast fashion industry.

I had no idea how bad fashion is for the environment. I was right to be mad at all the needless clothes for Christmas

earth.org/fast-fashion...