Writing from the Octolade team

Articles That Go Deep

Long-form pieces on the hard parts of AI automation: one real system taken apart end to end, and deep dives on the failures that quietly break a deployment.

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Deep Dives
August 28, 2026•3 min read

What Actually Breaks in a Production RAG Chatbot

A demo that answers everything and a deployment that answers wrong are usually the same system. Here is where the gap opens up, and what to instrument before it does.

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Teardowns
September 2, 2026•3 min read

The Anatomy of One Support Ticket

A single refund request, followed from inbox to resolution, with every automated decision and every place a human had to step in laid out in order.

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Deep Dives
August 21, 2026•2 min read

Your Chatbot Needs an Escape Hatch

The most important thing a support bot does is recognise when to stop. What a good handoff looks like, and the four failure modes that make customers hate the ones that do not have one.

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Guides
August 14, 2026•3 min read

Scoping Your First AI Automation

Most automation projects fail at the scoping stage, months before anyone writes code. A practical checklist for choosing a first process that will actually ship.

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Guides
August 5, 2026•2 min read

Fine-Tuning or Retrieval?

The decision is usually framed as a technical one and is almost always an operational one. A straight comparison, and the question that settles it in about a minute.

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Economics
July 30, 2026•3 min read

What an AI Agent Actually Costs

Token pricing is the part of the bill everyone models and the smallest line on it. A full accounting of what it takes to keep an agent running for a year.

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