Rico Kahler
I build foundational tools and systems for the modern web. My passion lies in untangling complex, low-level engineering problems and architecting elegant, large-scale systems with a deep focus on performance and computational efficiency.
What 14 Days of AI Context Compaction Failures Taught Me
August 30, 2026
Friday’s context compaction passed an early quality test but failed too often in production. Here is what went wrong, what I tested next, and why the new design uses less AI.
I Tested AI Context Compaction. The Clever Fork Lost.
August 16, 2026
I built a reasoning-continuity benchmark for AI context compaction. A cache-preserving prefix fork worked, then lost on quality, cost, and latency.
Writing Loops, Not Prompts, Explained
June 24, 2026
Loop engineering is not about abandoning prompts. It is about moving repeated steering work into verifiable systems so attention can stay on judgment, review, and taste.
Where AI Agents Actually Pay Off
June 4, 2026
A personal essay on where AI agents pay off: system design, benchmark harnesses, parallel work, token economics, and great foundations.
MAGA Explained
May 29, 2026
MAGA explained through reactionary idealism
The AGI Feeling Is Delegated Agency
May 7, 2026
AI feels profound when it collapses the cost of executing intent. That is not the same as machines having human will; it is delegated agency, and it is why UCA feels close for knowledge work with evaluable outcomes.
UCA vs. AGI: A Practical Way to Think About AI Automation
December 20, 2025
AGI asks how broadly capable a machine can become. Universal Computable Automation asks which tasks become automatable when success can be clearly evaluated, and where human judgment still matters.
Understanding JavaScript as an Open Standard
June 29, 2023
Want to know why there's a new JavaScript framework every week? It's not all that bad actually.
Core web vitals vs React.memo
April 13, 2022
'Performance' is a loaded word in the frontend/React world and hard to know exactly what people mean. This article explains the difference between web performance and re-render performance.
Reverting back to a document-based web with PDFs
January 18, 2022
On Sunday, January 16th, I made wordlepdf.com, a remake of Wordle… expect it uses PDFs.
A critical look at React Hooks
January 12, 2022
Here's my thoughts on the good as well as the bad of React Hooks
React Conf 2021
January 4, 2022
I watched all of React Conf 2021. Here's everything you should know.
Did React become a framework?
December 23, 2021
React has been focusing more and more on server-related features prompting familiar the question: Is React a framework or a library?