I don't aspire to be an AI engineer, but I do want to understand one layer down.

Here's who I'm following going into 2026

I don’t aspire to become an AI engineer, but I do need to understand one layer down. I’ve put together a list of who I’m following going into 2026.

(For me, one layer down means “building applications on top of foundation models” to borrow from Chip Huyen’s awesome O’Reilly book, AI Engineering)

This is an incomplete list, highly biased to my own fumbling around the internet, and whose emails I’m excited to open. I’d love your recommendations on technical people I should be following!

🏢 Company engineering blogs

• Anthropic’s blog is full of accessible, widely-cited bangers. Subscribe in the footer here. Even if you don’t, engineers will forward these to you.

• Whenever I wonder how Claude’s consumer features work, I can usually find it thoroughly explained in their developer docs.

• Surge’s blog is thought-provoking real talk, backed by their hands-on experience. (I can’t figure out how to subscribe, since they don’t have an RSS feed. In the meantime, I keep refreshing)

• Also following HumanLayer, PromptLayer, and Amp’s company blogs.

🤓 Individual engineers

• Doug Turnbull for agentic search (plus a bajillion lightning lesson recordings)

• Eleanor Berger and Isaac Plath put out incredible hands-on walkthroughs

• I like how Ben Guo (Zo Computer) thinks.

• Armin Ronacher early at Sentry, creator of Flask is refreshingly honest and accessible

• Mario Zechner exploring agents in public

• Jesse Vincent is open-source-famous and created the Claude Code Superpowers plugin. Anytime i see a new post I know it’s going to be accessible and super hands on.

• Simon Willison is one of the best at working in public and focuses on making everything practical.

Many of these don’t have email forms. I use a free RSS-to-email service to email me when they post new stuff (I chose Blogtrottr after doing zero research).

😵‍💫 How I discover good stuff

I stay away from feeds. Luckily, there’s people (and AI) who browse social media so I don’t have to. For technical stuff:

• I love the concept of Hacker News digest newsletters. Instead of compulsively refreshing HN, these free services wait a bit, see what shakes out, and email you a summary: https://hackernewsletter.com or https://www.hndigest.com

• Ben Tossell ends each newsletter with a section called “What I’m reading,” a solid way to discover high signal essays.

I also make time to go down rabbit holes. I schedule reading for mornings when my brain is freshest (esp earlier in the week). That’s when I’m naturally curious and excited to click on additional links. 

👓 Happy reading!

You don’t have to be an engineer to follow engineers. When Anthropic/OpenAI/Langchain/etc. announce a new capability (for developers or consumers), I’ve already seen these folks thinking about it in public.

It feels good to anticipate instead of chase.