VANDAM Weekly.
What changed in AI this week.
A short email from Hendrik once a week: what got released, what it means for companies of 20 to 500 people, one thing worth trying and one worth ignoring. Free, and readable in five minutes.
Subscribe by email- 01
Released
The models, tools and features that shipped this week, a few lines each, with a link to the source.
- 02
What it means
Which of it changes something for a company of 20 to 500 people, and in which teams.
- 03
Worth trying
One thing to try this week, usually in a tool your company already pays for.
- 04
Worth ignoring
The launch that filled the headlines and changes nothing in your week.
Who writes it
Hendrik De Winne reads the releases every week for the companies VANDAM works with: the frontier labs, the open-source models, the AI features inside 
Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and the other tools teams already pay for, and the rules coming out of Brussels and Washington.
The Weekly is the general version of that reading. The longer arguments go into the notes.
For your own company
The Weekly is written for everyone, so it cannot know your stack, your industry or the projects you have open. The AI Colleague does the same reading against your company and brings it to a weekly call.
- VANDAM Weekly
- One email for every reader
- What changed in AI this week
- Free
- AI Colleague
- A weekly call of 30 to 60 minutes, with a brief sent before it
- What changed for your company, your industry and the work you have running
- A monthly price, stop any month
Recent notes
- Who owns what your AI learns.
Y Combinator now asks for startups that help companies own their intelligence. Before a mid-sized company owns a model, it can own the four things every model works with: context, evals, rules and connections. - Delete the step first and give the agent whatever survives.Musk’s five-step method puts automation last, and most AI programs start there because an agent is the one step a vendor can sell. I walk accounts payable through the steps in his order and show why an agent that clears exceptions fast hides the steps that should go.
- Your agents need a critic and so does the plan they carry out.Models grade their own work too kindly, and the labs now separate the agent that makes from the agent that checks, the way finance separates maker and checker. I set out a four-layer review design with a minutes budget, and why the brief itself needs a critic with no stake in it.
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