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    <title>DUMB DEV Community: ANIRUDDHA  ADAK</title>
    <description>The latest articles on DUMB DEV Community by ANIRUDDHA  ADAK (@aniruddhaadak).</description>
    <link>https://dumb.dev.to/aniruddhaadak</link>
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      <title>DUMB DEV Community: ANIRUDDHA  ADAK</title>
      <link>https://dumb.dev.to/aniruddhaadak</link>
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    <item>
      <title>google i/o 2026 just changed everything - here's what i learned after testing</title>
      <dc:creator>ANIRUDDHA  ADAK</dc:creator>
      <pubDate>Tue, 19 May 2026 20:44:53 +0000</pubDate>
      <link>https://dumb.dev.to/aniruddhaadak/google-io-2026-just-changed-everything-heres-what-i-learned-after-testing-de0</link>
      <guid>https://dumb.dev.to/aniruddhaadak/google-io-2026-just-changed-everything-heres-what-i-learned-after-testing-de0</guid>
      <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;this is a submission for the &lt;a href="https://dev.to/challenges/google-io-writing-2026-05-19"&gt;google i/o writing challenge&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;i spent 100 hours testing (just joking 😜) everything google announced at i/o 2026. what started as curiosity turned into a full-blown obsession. here's what i found.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;google i/o 2026 wasn't just another conference. it was a fundamental shift in how ai integrates into our daily workflows. the announcements weren't incremental improvements - they were paradigm changes.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  the big picture
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;before diving into specifics, let me share what stood out most:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;i) gemini 3.5 flash - the agentic and coding model that actually delivers on its promises&lt;br&gt;
ii) antigravity 2.0 - standalone desktop app with multi-agent teams that work seamlessly&lt;br&gt;
iii) gemini omni - creates anything from any input, starting with video&lt;br&gt;
iv) spark - your 24/7 personal ai agent that never forgets context&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;these four represent the core of what makes this year's conference different. but there's more&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  gemini 3.5 flash
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;google claims gemini 3.5 flash is their strongest agentic and coding model, with 4x speed improvements. i was skeptical. after two weeks of daily use, i'm converted.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;the benchmark numbers look good on paper, but the real test is in everyday use. i've been using it for:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;[1] code review and optimization&lt;br&gt;
[2] debugging complex multi-file projects&lt;br&gt;
[3] generating documentation from scratch&lt;br&gt;
[4] refactoring legacy codebases&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;the difference from previous versions is noticeable. where earlier models would get stuck on context windows or lose track of requirements, gemini 3.5 flash maintains coherence across longer conversations. the coding output is cleaner, more efficient, and requires less iteration.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;i tested it on a project with over 50,000 lines of code. the model understood the architecture, identified performance bottlenecks, and suggested optimizations that saved me hours of manual work. it's not perfect, but it's close..&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  antigravity 2.0
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;i've been using antigravity for scheduled tasks, and the 2.0 reinstallation was a game-changer. the new standalone desktop app feels completely redesigned.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;the multi-agent team capabilities are exactly what i needed. i can set up complex workflows that run automatically, and the system handles dependencies between tasks intelligently. here's what i set up:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;✅ automated daily code analysis&lt;br&gt;
✅ weekly dependency updates&lt;br&gt;
✅ monthly security audits&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;the interface is cleaner, the response times are faster, and the error handling is much more robust. it's amazing how much smoother everything runs compared to the previous version.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;one thing i love is how it learns from my patterns. after a few weeks, it started suggesting optimizations i hadn't even considered. the system feels less like a tool and more like a collaborator.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  my favorite features
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;after diving deep into all the announcements, here are the features that stood out to me:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;1️⃣ &lt;strong&gt;gemini omni&lt;/strong&gt; - the ability to create anything from any input, starting with video, is genuinely impressive. if you have access to gemini omni, play with the video creation features. they're surprisingly intuitive.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;2️⃣ &lt;strong&gt;spark&lt;/strong&gt; - having a 24/7 personal ai agent that remembers context across sessions changes how i work. it's like having a research assistant who never forgets anything.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;3️⃣ &lt;strong&gt;gemini search with canvas artifacts&lt;/strong&gt; - the ability to interact with something in canvas while searching makes research so much more efficient. you can see the results, manipulate them, and iterate in real-time.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;🟠 &lt;strong&gt;amszig&lt;/strong&gt; - i haven't tried amszig yet, but from what i've seen, it looks like it could be a powerful addition to the ecosystem.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  other notable announcements
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;the conference had a lot more to offer beyond the headline models:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;{1} &lt;strong&gt;google flow&lt;/strong&gt; - a creative platform with tools and agent capabilities that could reshape how we approach content creation&lt;br&gt;
{2] &lt;strong&gt;neural expressive&lt;/strong&gt; - the redesigned gemini app with fluid animations feels like a glimpse into the future of ai interfaces&lt;br&gt;
{3} &lt;strong&gt;daily brief&lt;/strong&gt; - personalized morning digest sounds useful for staying updated&lt;br&gt;
[4] &lt;strong&gt;google pics&lt;/strong&gt; - image creation and editing directly in workspace could streamline workflows&lt;br&gt;
[5} &lt;strong&gt;universal cart&lt;/strong&gt; - a shopping hub across google services is a bold move&lt;br&gt;
(6} &lt;strong&gt;android halo&lt;/strong&gt; - agent visibility on android devices brings ai to the mobile experience&lt;br&gt;
[7) &lt;strong&gt;intelligent eyewear&lt;/strong&gt; - partnerships with samsung, gentle monster, and warby parker show google's commitment to wearables&lt;br&gt;
(8} &lt;strong&gt;ask youtube&lt;/strong&gt; - conversational search on youtube changes how we discover content&lt;br&gt;
(9] &lt;strong&gt;stitch&lt;/strong&gt; - collaborative design agent could transform team workflows&lt;br&gt;
{10) &lt;strong&gt;ai search box&lt;/strong&gt; - reimagined with gemini 3.5 flash as default&lt;br&gt;
{11] &lt;strong&gt;gemini for science&lt;/strong&gt; - experimental tools for scientific exploration open new possibilities&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  the numbers
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;the scale of adoption is staggering:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;☑️ 900 million+ gemini app users (doubled in one year)&lt;br&gt;
✔️ 13 products with over 1 billion users each&lt;br&gt;
☑️ ai ultra plan: $100/month new tier, $200/month reduced top tier&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  final thoughts
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;google i/o 2026 wasn't just about incremental improvements. it was a statement that ai is becoming the foundation of everything we do online. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;the integration across products, the speed improvements, and the focus on practical applications show that google is serious about making ai useful, not just impressive.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;for developers, the opportunities are enormous. whether you're building with gemini 3.5 flash, automating workflows with antigravity 2.0, or exploring the creative possibilities of google flow, there's never been a better time to be building with ai.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;what about you? &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;what aspects of google i/o 2026 are you most excited about? drop a comment below and let's discuss.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;thanks for reading, and happy building&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

</description>
      <category>googleiochallenge</category>
      <category>devchallenge</category>
      <category>ai</category>
      <category>gemini</category>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>I found a bug that could crash your Hermes agent and fixed it</title>
      <dc:creator>ANIRUDDHA  ADAK</dc:creator>
      <pubDate>Sun, 17 May 2026 16:43:57 +0000</pubDate>
      <link>https://dumb.dev.to/aniruddhaadak/building-with-hermes-agent-hardening-the-permission-approval-bridge-4gen</link>
      <guid>https://dumb.dev.to/aniruddhaadak/building-with-hermes-agent-hardening-the-permission-approval-bridge-4gen</guid>
      <description>&lt;p&gt;i contributed a bug fix to the hermes agent project that makes the permission approval system more robust and reliable. the change handles an edge case where the permission request could return none instead of a valid response, which could cause the agent to crash or behave unexpectedly.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;the fix adds proper error handling so that when the permission system gets an unexpected none response, it defaults to denying the request safely. this is a small but important improvement that makes hermes agent more stable in production environments.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  why this matters for the community
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;when you run hermes agent and it needs to ask for permission before running a command, it uses a bridge system to communicate with the approval callback. if something goes wrong in that communication and the system gets a none response, the old code would fail silently or throw an error.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;by adding a simple check that returns deny when response is none, we ensure that the agent always has a safe fallback. this prevents crashes and keeps the permission system predictable. users can trust that their commands will either be approved or denied, never left hanging.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;this kind of defensive coding is important for an agent that runs on your own infrastructure and handles sensitive operations. every edge case handled well means fewer surprises in production.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  code
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;here are the files i changed:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;the main fix in &lt;code&gt;acp_adapter/permissions.py&lt;/code&gt; adds a guard clause that checks for none and returns deny safely.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight js-code-highlight"&gt;
&lt;pre class="highlight python"&gt;&lt;code&gt;        &lt;span class="k"&gt;if&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="n"&gt;response&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="ow"&gt;is&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="bp"&gt;None&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="p"&gt;:&lt;/span&gt;
            &lt;span class="k"&gt;return&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="sh"&gt;"&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="s"&gt;deny&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="sh"&gt;"&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;/div&gt;


&lt;p&gt;the test file &lt;code&gt;tests/acp/test_permissions.py&lt;/code&gt; adds a regression test that ensures this behavior is covered going forward.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2Felcocb2qn73unpyc0g5b.png" class="article-body-image-wrapper"&gt;&lt;img src="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2Felcocb2qn73unpyc0g5b.png" alt="Image descr iption" width="699" height="537"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;you can find the full merged pull request here:&lt;/p&gt;


&lt;div class="ltag_github-liquid-tag"&gt;
  &lt;h1&gt;
    &lt;a href="https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/pull/13457" rel="noopener noreferrer"&gt;
      &lt;img class="github-logo" alt="GitHub logo" src="https://assets.dev.to/assets/github-logo-5a155e1f9a670af7944dd5e12375bc76ed542ea80224905ecaf878b9157cdefc.svg"&gt;
      &lt;span class="issue-title"&gt;
        fix(permissions): handle None response from ACP request_permission
      &lt;/span&gt;
      &lt;span class="issue-number"&gt;#13457&lt;/span&gt;
    &lt;/a&gt;
  &lt;/h1&gt;
  &lt;div class="github-thread"&gt;
    &lt;div class="timeline-comment-header"&gt;
      &lt;a href="https://github.com/aniruddhaadak80" rel="noopener noreferrer"&gt;
        &lt;img class="github-liquid-tag-img" src="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Favatars.githubusercontent.com%2Fu%2F127435065%3Fv%3D4" alt="aniruddhaadak80 avatar"&gt;
      &lt;/a&gt;
      &lt;div class="timeline-comment-header-text"&gt;
        &lt;strong&gt;
          &lt;a href="https://github.com/aniruddhaadak80" rel="noopener noreferrer"&gt;aniruddhaadak80&lt;/a&gt;
        &lt;/strong&gt; posted on &lt;a href="https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/pull/13457" rel="noopener noreferrer"&gt;&lt;time&gt;Apr 21, 2026&lt;/time&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
      &lt;/div&gt;
    &lt;/div&gt;
    &lt;div class="ltag-github-body"&gt;
      &lt;div class="markdown-heading"&gt;
&lt;h2 class="heading-element"&gt;What does this PR do?&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;span class="octicon octicon-link"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This PR hardens the ACP ? Hermes permission-approval bridge by safely handling an unexpected None result from
equest_permission, preventing attribute errors and defaulting to a safe deny.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;div class="markdown-heading"&gt;
&lt;h2 class="heading-element"&gt;Related Issue&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;span class="octicon octicon-link"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Fixes #13449&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;div class="markdown-heading"&gt;
&lt;h2 class="heading-element"&gt;Type of Change&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;span class="octicon octicon-link"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;[x] ?? Bug fix (non-breaking change that fixes an issue)&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;[ ] ? New feature (non-breaking change that adds functionality)&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;[ ] ?? Security fix&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;[ ] ?? Documentation update&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;[x] ? Tests (adding or improving test coverage)&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;[ ] ?? Refactor (no behavior change)&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;[ ] ?? New skill (bundled or hub)&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;div class="markdown-heading"&gt;
&lt;h2 class="heading-element"&gt;Changes Made&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;span class="octicon octicon-link"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Return "deny" when
equest_permission resolves to None in the approval callback.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Add a unit test covering the None response case to ensure the callback denies safely.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;div class="markdown-heading"&gt;
&lt;h2 class="heading-element"&gt;How to Test&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;span class="octicon octicon-link"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;ol&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Connect via an ACP client that sends an empty response to permission requests.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Verify the permission is denied rather than throwing an exception.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ol&gt;
&lt;div class="markdown-heading"&gt;
&lt;h2 class="heading-element"&gt;Checklist&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;span class="octicon octicon-link"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div class="markdown-heading"&gt;
&lt;h3 class="heading-element"&gt;Code&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;span class="octicon octicon-link"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;[x] I've read the Contributing Guide&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;[x] My commit messages follow Conventional Commits&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;[x] I searched for existing PRs to make sure this isn't a duplicate&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;[x] My PR contains only changes related to this fix/feature (no unrelated commits)&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;[x] I've run pytest tests/ -q and all tests pass&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;[x] I've added tests for my changes (required for bug fixes, strongly encouraged for features)&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;[x] I've tested on my platform&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;div class="markdown-heading"&gt;
&lt;h3 class="heading-element"&gt;Documentation &amp;amp; Housekeeping&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;span class="octicon octicon-link"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;[x] I've updated relevant documentation (README, docs/, docstrings) � or N/A&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;[x] I've updated cli-config.yaml.example if I added/changed config keys � or N/A&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;[x] I've updated CONTRIBUTING.md or AGENTS.md if I changed architecture or workflows � or N/A&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;[x] I've considered cross-platform impact (Windows, macOS) per the compatibility guide � or N/A&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;[x] I've updated tool descriptions/schemas if I changed tool behavior � or N/A&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

    &lt;/div&gt;
    &lt;div class="gh-btn-container"&gt;&lt;a class="gh-btn" href="https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/pull/13457" rel="noopener noreferrer"&gt;View on GitHub&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  &lt;/div&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;



&lt;p&gt;and the repository is here:&lt;/p&gt;


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    &lt;h2&gt;
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        NousResearch
      &lt;/a&gt; / &lt;a href="https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent" rel="noopener noreferrer"&gt;
        hermes-agent
      &lt;/a&gt;
    &lt;/h2&gt;
    &lt;h3&gt;
      The agent that grows with you
    &lt;/h3&gt;
  &lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;div id="readme" class="md"&gt;
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&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="markdown-heading"&gt;
&lt;h1 class="heading-element"&gt;Hermes Agent ☤&lt;/h1&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;

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&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The self-improving AI agent built by &lt;a href="https://nousresearch.com" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"&gt;Nous Research&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt; It's the only agent with a built-in learning loop — it creates skills from experience, improves them during use, nudges itself to persist knowledge, searches its own past conversations, and builds a deepening model of who you are across sessions. Run it on a $5 VPS, a GPU cluster, or serverless infrastructure that costs nearly nothing when idle. It's not tied to your laptop — talk to it from Telegram while it works on a cloud VM.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Use any model you want — &lt;a href="https://portal.nousresearch.com" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"&gt;Nous Portal&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="https://openrouter.ai" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"&gt;OpenRouter&lt;/a&gt; (200+ models), &lt;a href="https://novita.ai" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"&gt;NovitaAI&lt;/a&gt; (AI-native cloud for Model API, Agent Sandbox, and GPU Cloud), &lt;a href="https://build.nvidia.com" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"&gt;NVIDIA NIM&lt;/a&gt; (Nemotron), &lt;a href="https://platform.xiaomimimo.com" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"&gt;Xiaomi MiMo&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="https://z.ai" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"&gt;z.ai/GLM&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="https://platform.moonshot.ai" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"&gt;Kimi/Moonshot&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="https://www.minimax.io" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"&gt;MiniMax&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="https://huggingface.co" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"&gt;Hugging Face&lt;/a&gt;, OpenAI, or your own endpoint. Switch with &lt;code&gt;hermes model&lt;/code&gt; — no code changes, no lock-in.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class="table-wrapper-paragraph"&gt;&lt;table&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
&lt;tbody&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
&lt;td&gt;&lt;b&gt;A real terminal interface&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Full TUI with multiline&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
&lt;/tbody&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/div&gt;…&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
  &lt;/div&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
  &lt;div class="gh-btn-container"&gt;&lt;a class="gh-btn" href="https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent" rel="noopener noreferrer"&gt;View on GitHub&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;br&gt;


&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  how it works
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;the approval callback function handles permission requests from the ACP system. when a command needs approval, it runs a coroutine to get the response from the permission handler.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;in the try block, if the coroutine completes successfully, the code checks if the response is none. if it is none, the function immediately returns deny.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;this approach is straightforward but effective. it means that even in unusual situations where the permission system does not return a proper response, the callback always produces a valid result. the agent continues running instead of crashing.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;the test confirms this behavior by mocking the coroutine to return none and verifying that the callback returns deny.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  my tech stack
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;the changes were made using python with the standard library asyncio module for handling asynchronous permission requests. the test uses pytest with mock objects to verify the behavior without needing a full system setup.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  lessons learned
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;working on this fix taught me a few things about building reliable agent systems.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;first, edge cases matter. in a system that handles permissions, every unexpected input should have a clear handling path. crashing is never the right answer.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;second, testing edge cases is just as important as testing happy paths. the regression test ensures that this none response case keeps working correctly as the codebase evolves.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;third, the hermes agent codebase is well structured and welcoming to contributions. the team uses copilot for code review, which helps catch potential improvements early.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;i am glad to have contributed to an open source project that gives developers control over their own AI agents. the hermes agent challenge is a great way to get involved and learn about agentic systems.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;p&gt;thanks for reading. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;if you want to explore hermes agent or contribute to it, check out the github repository linked above.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;and thanks again ...&lt;/p&gt;

</description>
      <category>hermesagentchallenge</category>
      <category>devchallenge</category>
      <category>agents</category>
      <category>ai</category>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>hermes agent: the complete guide to your personal ai operator</title>
      <dc:creator>ANIRUDDHA  ADAK</dc:creator>
      <pubDate>Sat, 16 May 2026 05:51:26 +0000</pubDate>
      <link>https://dumb.dev.to/aniruddhaadak/hermes-agent-the-complete-guide-to-your-personal-ai-operator-28k4</link>
      <guid>https://dumb.dev.to/aniruddhaadak/hermes-agent-the-complete-guide-to-your-personal-ai-operator-28k4</guid>
      <description>&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;i remember the first time i heard about hermes agent - it sounded like something out of a science fiction movie. an ai that doesn't just chat with you, but actually does things for you. sounds crazy, right? well, let me tell you, it's real, and it's changed how i work completely.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;hey there. i'm so excited to share what i've learned about hermes agent after spending weeks exploring it. if you're tired of doing repetitive computer tasks and want an ai buddy that actually helps you get stuff done, you're in the right place.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  what exactly is hermes agent
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;let me put it simply - hermes agent is like having a super-smart assistant who lives in your computer and can actually &lt;em&gt;do things&lt;/em&gt; for you. not just answer questions, but open programs, write code, organize files, send emails, and much more.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;here's what makes it special:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;a) &lt;strong&gt;open source&lt;/strong&gt; - it's free to use and you can see how it works&lt;br&gt;
b) &lt;strong&gt;built by nous research&lt;/strong&gt; - the team behind some amazing ai tools&lt;br&gt;
c) &lt;strong&gt;140,000+ developers&lt;/strong&gt; on github love it&lt;br&gt;
d) &lt;strong&gt;over 40 tools&lt;/strong&gt; built right in&lt;br&gt;
e) &lt;strong&gt;learns as it goes&lt;/strong&gt; - gets better the more you use it&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;"hermes agent is an operator, not a builder. it does the work, not just plans it." - nemanja&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  the four-level path: how hermes grows with you
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;i love how hermes scales with your needs. here's what i found:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;1️⃣ &lt;strong&gt;one agent&lt;/strong&gt; - start simple. one ai helper that can do basic tasks like searching the web or organizing files.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;2️⃣ &lt;strong&gt;multiple specialists&lt;/strong&gt; - as you need more, hermes can use different ai models for different jobs. one for coding, one for writing, one for research.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;3️⃣ &lt;strong&gt;hermes orchestrator&lt;/strong&gt; - the smart part. hermes decides which specialist to use for each task and makes sure everything works together smoothly.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;4️⃣ &lt;strong&gt;automated agent team&lt;/strong&gt; - the full experience. hermes coordinates multiple ai agents working together like a tiny team, all while you focus on the big picture.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  what makes hermes agent special
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;after testing it myself, here's what impressed me the most:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;
  
  
  three-tier memory
&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;hermes remembers things in three ways:&lt;br&gt;
x) short-term memory for the current task&lt;br&gt;
y) working memory for important details&lt;br&gt;
z) long-term memory for things you tell it to remember&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;this means it doesn't forget what you told it five minutes ago.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;
  
  
  geppa optimization
&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;this is the fancy term for hermes getting smarter. it learns from your feedback and gets better at choosing the right tools and models for each job.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;
  
  
  self-evolving skills
&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;i was blown away by this. hermes can actually improve itself. one user reported it became &lt;em&gt;3 times faster&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;80% cheaper&lt;/em&gt; after just 2 iterations. that's pretty amazing.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;
  
  
  codex runtime integration
&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;this lets hermes run code safely and efficiently. you can ask it to write and execute code without worrying about breaking anything.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  nine workflows that changed my life
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;ole lehmann shared these workflows, and i've tried most of them:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;1️⃣ &lt;strong&gt;customer support cron&lt;/strong&gt; - hermes can monitor support tickets and respond to common questions automatically.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;2️⃣ &lt;strong&gt;weekly business report&lt;/strong&gt; - set it up once, and every week it gathers data and writes your report. i use this every monday morning.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;3️⃣ &lt;strong&gt;daily brief&lt;/strong&gt; - every morning, hermes gives you a summary of emails, messages, and tasks. perfect way to start the day.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;4️⃣ &lt;strong&gt;travel planning&lt;/strong&gt; - from flights to hotels to restaurants, hermes researches and compares everything. i planned my last vacation with minimal effort.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;5️⃣ &lt;strong&gt;seo research&lt;/strong&gt; - if you write content, hermes can research keywords, analyze competitors, and suggest improvements.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;6️⃣ &lt;strong&gt;content creation&lt;/strong&gt; - write blog posts, social media updates, or emails. hermes can draft, edit, and format content for you.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;7️⃣ &lt;strong&gt;client tasks&lt;/strong&gt; - manage multiple client projects. hermes tracks deadlines, sends reminders, and keeps everything organized.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;8️⃣ &lt;strong&gt;local tool automation&lt;/strong&gt; - connect hermes to your local apps and automate repetitive tasks on your computer.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;9️⃣ &lt;strong&gt;obsidian llm wiki second brain&lt;/strong&gt; - hermes helps organize your notes and connects related ideas. it's like having a personal librarian for your thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  getting started with hermes agent
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;i know setup can be scary, but hermes makes it easy. here's what i did:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;1️⃣ &lt;strong&gt;visit the github repository&lt;/strong&gt; - go to the hermes agent repo and click the green "code" button to download.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;2️⃣ &lt;strong&gt;follow the install guide&lt;/strong&gt; - head to hermesatlas.com for step-by-step instructions. no command line experience needed.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;3️⃣ &lt;strong&gt;start with simple workflows&lt;/strong&gt; - don't try to automate everything at once. begin with one task, like organizing your downloads folder.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;4️⃣ &lt;strong&gt;add api keys&lt;/strong&gt; - hermes needs access to ai models. you'll need your own api keys for best results.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;5️⃣ &lt;strong&gt;test and tweak&lt;/strong&gt; - watch what hermes does, give feedback, and it will get better over time.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  pricing and subscription
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;here's the honest truth about costs:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;p) &lt;strong&gt;free tier&lt;/strong&gt; - you can use hermes agent itself for free&lt;br&gt;
q) &lt;strong&gt;api costs&lt;/strong&gt; - you pay for the ai models it uses&lt;br&gt;
r) &lt;strong&gt;no hidden fees&lt;/strong&gt; - what you see is what you pay&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;i found that using deepseek v4 flash as the supervisor with local workers costs about &lt;em&gt;1/20th&lt;/em&gt; of other options. pretty sweet deal.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  keeping things safe and secure
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;i was worried about security at first, but hermes has you covered:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;i) &lt;strong&gt;use separate accounts&lt;/strong&gt; - don't use your main accounts for hermes&lt;br&gt;
ii) &lt;strong&gt;own api keys&lt;/strong&gt; - use your own keys so you control access&lt;br&gt;
iii) &lt;strong&gt;least privilege&lt;/strong&gt; - only give hermes the permissions it needs&lt;br&gt;
iv) &lt;strong&gt;review actions&lt;/strong&gt; - hermes shows you what it's about to do before doing it&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;"security is not an afterthought with hermes. it's built into every step." - user testimonial&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  how hermes compares to others
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;i tested a few similar tools, and here's what i found:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="table-wrapper-paragraph"&gt;&lt;table&gt;
&lt;thead&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;th&gt;tool&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;th&gt;tokens used&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;th&gt;best for&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;/thead&gt;
&lt;tbody&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;hermes agent&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;353 billion&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;general automation&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;openclaw&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;195 billion&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;coding tasks&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;kilo code&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;166 billion&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;developer workflows&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;/tbody&gt;
&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;hermes agent ranks number one in usage, which tells me people are actually using it for real work.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  what real users say
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;i read through tons of user experiences, and these stood out to me:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;"i was skeptical at first, but hermes agent saved me over &lt;code&gt;10 hours&lt;/code&gt; every week. the initial setup took some time, but it paid off." - kyle&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;"the memory system is game-changing. hermes remembers context from days ago, which makes complex tasks possible." - john king&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;"i use it for my consulting business. it handles client communications, research, and reporting. i focus on strategy now." - tessa kriesel&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  recent updates and bug fixes
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;the hermes team is constantly improving. here's what's new:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;A) tui fix for vietnamese and cjk input&lt;br&gt;
B) slack whitespace guard&lt;br&gt;
C) cli exception logging&lt;br&gt;
D) url safety improvements&lt;br&gt;
E) mcp regex optimization&lt;br&gt;
F) browser tool error handling&lt;br&gt;
G) codex runtime fix&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  my final thoughts
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;look, i get it. the idea of an ai agent that can control your computer sounds overwhelming. i felt the same way at first. but after using hermes agent for a few weeks, i can honestly say it's been one of the best productivity tools i've ever used.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;it's not perfect - sometimes it makes mistakes, and you need to supervise it. but that's the point. hermes is like a really smart intern who needs some guidance but can do amazing work once you show it the ropes.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;the best part. hermes gets better the more you use it. it learns your preferences, your workflows, and your style. after a month, it feels less like a tool and more like a teammate.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;if you've been curious about ai agents but didn't know where to start, hermes agent is the perfect place. it's open source, well-documented, and backed by a passionate community.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;give it a try. start small. watch it work. and before you know it, you'll wonder how you ever managed without it.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  ready to dive in?
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;here's what i recommend:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;a) visit the &lt;a href="https://github.com/nousresearch/hermes-agent" rel="noopener noreferrer"&gt;github repository&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
b) follow the install guide at &lt;code&gt;hermesatlas.com&lt;/code&gt;&lt;br&gt;
c) start with one simple workflow&lt;br&gt;
d) join the community and ask questions&lt;br&gt;
e) share your experience with others&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;remember, hermes agent is not here to replace you. it's here to &lt;em&gt;free you up&lt;/em&gt; to do the work that really matters. the creative stuff, the strategic thinking, the human connection. let hermes handle the rest.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;happy automating, friends. 🚀&lt;/p&gt;

</description>
      <category>agents</category>
      <category>hermesagentchallenge</category>
      <category>automation</category>
      <category>devchallenge</category>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Gemma 4 Complete Guide 2026, Architecture, Benchmarks, Deployment and more ...</title>
      <dc:creator>ANIRUDDHA  ADAK</dc:creator>
      <pubDate>Thu, 07 May 2026 05:40:07 +0000</pubDate>
      <link>https://dumb.dev.to/aniruddhaadak/gemma-4-complete-guide-2026-architecture-benchmarks-deployment-3en9</link>
      <guid>https://dumb.dev.to/aniruddhaadak/gemma-4-complete-guide-2026-architecture-benchmarks-deployment-3en9</guid>
      <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This is a submission for the &lt;a href="https://dev.to/challenges/google-gemma-2026-05-06"&gt;Gemma 4 Challenge: Write About Gemma 4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  &lt;code&gt;Gemma 4 Complete Guide 2026&lt;/code&gt;
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Gemma 4&lt;/strong&gt; is shaping up to be the most consequential open weight model release of the year, and the headline is not just the leaderboard scores. Google shipped &lt;em&gt;four&lt;/em&gt; model sizes, native multimodality, a &lt;strong&gt;256K context window&lt;/strong&gt; on the larger variants, and for the first time in the Gemma line, a clean &lt;strong&gt;Apache 2.0&lt;/strong&gt; license.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;For engineering teams that have been waiting on an open weight model good enough to actually replace a frontier API for a meaningful slice of their workload, this is the first credible candidate from Google.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2F6yrshq92rvaamio1mqon.png" class="article-body-image-wrapper"&gt;&lt;img src="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2F6yrshq92rvaamio1mqon.png" alt="Imag ption" width="800" height="450"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This guide is the long version. It walks through what the family looks like,&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;i) what the architecture actually does,&lt;br&gt;
ii) what the benchmark numbers mean in practice,&lt;br&gt;
iii) how it stacks up against Llama 4, Qwen 3.5, DeepSeek V4 Flash and its own predecessors,&lt;br&gt;
iv) where to host it, and where it falls short.&lt;br&gt;
v) If you are evaluating Gemma 4 for production, this is the document you can hand to your team.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  &lt;code&gt;TL;DR, the Quick Read&lt;/code&gt;
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Before we dive into the long version, here is the snapshot you can keep in your back pocket.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Released:&lt;/em&gt; April 2, 2026, by Google DeepMind.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The family ships in four sizes, namely &lt;strong&gt;Gemma 4 E2B&lt;/strong&gt; (around 2.3B effective), &lt;strong&gt;E4B&lt;/strong&gt; (around 4.5B effective), &lt;strong&gt;26B A4B&lt;/strong&gt; (a Mixture of Experts with 4B active), and a dense &lt;strong&gt;31B&lt;/strong&gt;. Licensing has finally moved to &lt;strong&gt;Apache 2.0&lt;/strong&gt;, which is a meaningful change because earlier Gemma generations shipped under the custom &lt;em&gt;Gemma Terms of Use&lt;/em&gt; that often made enterprise legal review painful.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Context windows reach &lt;strong&gt;128K tokens&lt;/strong&gt; on the E2B and E4B variants, and &lt;strong&gt;256K&lt;/strong&gt; on the 26B A4B and the 31B. Every variant takes text plus image input, while E2B and E4B additionally take audio. Output, on every variant, is text only.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;On the strong side, Gemma 4 nails reasoning, math (&lt;code&gt;AIME 2026 ~89%&lt;/code&gt;), code generation (&lt;code&gt;LiveCodeBench v6 ~80%&lt;/code&gt;), long context recall, and on device deployment via &lt;strong&gt;MediaPipe&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;LiteRT&lt;/strong&gt;. On the weak side, it trails Qwen 3.5 27B on &lt;code&gt;SWE-bench Verified&lt;/code&gt;, has no native speech output, and a reminder worth repeating, &lt;em&gt;Gemma is not Gemini&lt;/em&gt;, so fine tuning, weights and serving become your problem.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  &lt;code&gt;Watch the offical demo here&lt;/code&gt;:   &lt;iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jZVBoFOJK-Q"&gt;
  &lt;/iframe&gt;

&lt;/h2&gt;




&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  &lt;code&gt;What Gemma 4 Is, And How It Differs From Gemini&lt;/code&gt;
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Gemma is Google's &lt;em&gt;open weight&lt;/em&gt; model family. Gemini is Google's &lt;em&gt;closed, hosted, frontier&lt;/em&gt; model family. They share research lineage, in fact Google describes Gemma 4 as &lt;strong&gt;built from Gemini 3 research&lt;/strong&gt;, but the deployment story is genuinely different.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;With Gemini, you call an API, you pay per token, you do not get the weights, and you cannot fine tune the underlying parameters, you get adapters at best. With Gemma 4, you download the weights from Hugging Face, Kaggle or Ollama, you run them on your own hardware (or a cloud GPU you rent), you fine tune fully, and your unit economics become &lt;em&gt;GPU hours and electricity&lt;/em&gt; rather than per token API spend.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The practical implication is straightforward.&lt;br&gt;
i) Reach for &lt;strong&gt;Gemma 4&lt;/strong&gt; when you need on device inference, when you need to fine tune on private data, when your token volume makes a hosted API uneconomical, or when you need an air gapped deployment.&lt;br&gt;
ii) Reach for &lt;strong&gt;Gemini&lt;/strong&gt; when you want zero ops frontier intelligence and you are happy to pay for it.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  &lt;code&gt;The Gemma 4 Family&lt;/code&gt;
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2Feuaelf4ej0xbtcp79qi2.png" class="article-body-image-wrapper"&gt;&lt;img src="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2Feuaelf4ej0xbtcp79qi2.png" alt="Image descri ption" width="800" height="450"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Four sizes, two architectural patterns (&lt;code&gt;dense&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;MoE&lt;/code&gt;), and a clear split between the &lt;em&gt;edge&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;server&lt;/em&gt; tiers.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="table-wrapper-paragraph"&gt;&lt;table&gt;
&lt;thead&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;th&gt;Variant&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;th&gt;Architecture&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;th&gt;Total / Active params&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;th&gt;Context&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;th&gt;Modalities in&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;th&gt;Primary target&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;/thead&gt;
&lt;tbody&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Gemma 4 E2B&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Dense&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;~2.3B effective&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;128K&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Text, image, audio&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Phones, IoT, low power laptops&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Gemma 4 E4B&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Dense&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;~4.5B effective&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;128K&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Text, image, audio&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;High end phones, edge servers, Raspberry Pi class&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Gemma 4 26B A4B&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Mixture of Experts&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;26B total / ~4B active per token&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;256K&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Text, image&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Single high end GPU server, cost sensitive throughput&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Gemma 4 31B&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Dense&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;30.7B&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;256K&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Text, image&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Quality first server inference, fine tuning&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;/tbody&gt;
&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;A small naming clarification first. The &lt;code&gt;E&lt;/code&gt; in &lt;em&gt;E2B&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;E4B&lt;/em&gt; stands for &lt;strong&gt;edge&lt;/strong&gt;, not &lt;em&gt;experts&lt;/em&gt;. These are dense models built for on device.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The 26B A4B is the actual MoE in the family. Roughly &lt;em&gt;4 billion&lt;/em&gt; parameters fire on any given forward pass, so latency and cost behave like a 4B model, while quality benefits from the full 26B parameter pool. The 31B is the no tricks dense model, slower than the MoE, but typically the highest quality answer when you need &lt;em&gt;the best response per query&lt;/em&gt; rather than &lt;em&gt;the best response per dollar&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  &lt;code&gt;Architecture, Context Window, And Tokenizer&lt;/code&gt;
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsspark.genspark.ai%2Fcfimages%3Fu1%3DraE74PfvNg%252BD8vC7H5%252FqRrD2LwbPHgocNX0MwWXlixUl%252FJTzOyQcrt8LuDPX10vc8WynQ8%252Fz2I1qAHCmOMOylIZUbhU%253D%26u2%3DRij0KPILhUUwpdpa%26width%3D2560" class="article-body-image-wrapper"&gt;&lt;img src="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsspark.genspark.ai%2Fcfimages%3Fu1%3DraE74PfvNg%252BD8vC7H5%252FqRrD2LwbPHgocNX0MwWXlixUl%252FJTzOyQcrt8LuDPX10vc8WynQ8%252Fz2I1qAHCmOMOylIZUbhU%253D%26u2%3DRij0KPILhUUwpdpa%26width%3D2560" alt="Mixture of Experts architecture diagram" width="2400" height="1254"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Gemma 4 keeps the decoder only transformer skeleton that has defined the family,&lt;br&gt;
but it tightens almost every component.&lt;br&gt;
A few highlights worth knowing before you read the model card.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;a) Hybrid attention.&lt;/strong&gt; Gemma 4 interleaves &lt;em&gt;local sliding window attention&lt;/em&gt; with &lt;em&gt;full global attention&lt;/em&gt;, with the final layer always global. Smaller dense models use 512 token sliding windows, and larger ones use 1024. This is the trick that makes the 256K context feasible without VRAM blowing up linearly.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;b) RULER long context recall.&lt;/strong&gt; On &lt;code&gt;RULER&lt;/code&gt; at 128K, Gemma 3 scored &lt;em&gt;13.5%&lt;/em&gt;. Gemma 4 scores &lt;em&gt;66.4%&lt;/em&gt; on the same test. The context window is not just nominal, it actually retrieves at depth.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;c) Vocabulary.&lt;/strong&gt; A &lt;code&gt;262,144 token&lt;/code&gt; vocabulary, BPE with byte fallback. Strong multilingual coverage across more than 140 languages.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;d) Vision tokens.&lt;/strong&gt; A variable visual budget per image, namely &lt;code&gt;70&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;140&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;280&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;560&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;1120&lt;/code&gt; tokens, so you trade quality against context spend.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;e) Audio (E2B and E4B only).&lt;/strong&gt; Native speech recognition and audio understanding, with no separate ASR layer required for many use cases.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;f) Reasoning mode.&lt;/strong&gt; Gemma 4 can produce more than &lt;code&gt;4,000&lt;/code&gt; tokens of explicit reasoning before committing to an answer, plus native function calling and structured JSON output.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The MoE in the &lt;strong&gt;26B A4B&lt;/strong&gt; is the architectural story to internalise. It lets a single A100 80GB or two consumer GPUs serve a model that punches well above 4B in quality terms, at roughly 4B in cost terms. That is the new dominant design point for the open weight server tier in 2026.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsspark.genspark.ai%2Fcfimages%3Fu1%3Dh1blmxOby8%252BCEILpXvILx1xik4lFwwkMTmiQnO3hKEkpbo%252BMivILKKZ1uqzV24KQ7LBE9JebN4Ly5BLStI2iLSL91WVKRK1uOzTjGFZimvu8VIZwtaSOb6K9R8%252FsI5uDoxDd6epGNamc4HiQIsm%252BX5ImT0T9K%252FCYUZiPUVKMzpGh3Cpsdew%252F6CCOei3q%252B5plz8AavE%252FO9EpmjLBSKvyCAUm1fEJYF1cxNTzPNOVTklkiZL%252FjxinLDapIkAWztiIZUugKVNmRrb7AAijA1C9gVOaYvOLx8ijVivWdA10a%26u2%3DBmU%252F61z4Fq1KNPPM%26width%3D2560" class="article-body-image-wrapper"&gt;&lt;img src="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsspark.genspark.ai%2Fcfimages%3Fu1%3Dh1blmxOby8%252BCEILpXvILx1xik4lFwwkMTmiQnO3hKEkpbo%252BMivILKKZ1uqzV24KQ7LBE9JebN4Ly5BLStI2iLSL91WVKRK1uOzTjGFZimvu8VIZwtaSOb6K9R8%252FsI5uDoxDd6epGNamc4HiQIsm%252BX5ImT0T9K%252FCYUZiPUVKMzpGh3Cpsdew%252F6CCOei3q%252B5plz8AavE%252FO9EpmjLBSKvyCAUm1fEJYF1cxNTzPNOVTklkiZL%252FjxinLDapIkAWztiIZUugKVNmRrb7AAijA1C9gVOaYvOLx8ijVivWdA10a%26u2%3DBmU%252F61z4Fq1KNPPM%26width%3D2560" alt="Visual guide to Mixture of Experts routing" width="1460" height="640"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  &lt;code&gt;License, Apache 2.0, Finally&lt;/code&gt;
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsspark.genspark.ai%2Fcfimages%3Fu1%3Diu%252BgzM2B0VkbbxD6NbQeaAjPhc1%252BQkjiwXYtPFRz1rVSDZWSJvOsO3j8aKmr9L2gN29Lo4zITWR%252B%252BhZySBamc9l7%252Fban%252FrSHyPAiyHK4S2nqGqupRrDtaT3Z7RJlAY6dtIq4%252FL4Sy27dYdVZ%252FZ0w3E1P0OxcXjdHEDFTEF1z8VLsrk7Kyiu6hfKyXVd%252FznYPXa58h4I%252FMuWtKAHnhac%253D%26u2%3DdO5skgjevfndE3uq%26width%3D2560" class="article-body-image-wrapper"&gt;&lt;img src="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsspark.genspark.ai%2Fcfimages%3Fu1%3Diu%252BgzM2B0VkbbxD6NbQeaAjPhc1%252BQkjiwXYtPFRz1rVSDZWSJvOsO3j8aKmr9L2gN29Lo4zITWR%252B%252BhZySBamc9l7%252Fban%252FrSHyPAiyHK4S2nqGqupRrDtaT3Z7RJlAY6dtIq4%252FL4Sy27dYdVZ%252FZ0w3E1P0OxcXjdHEDFTEF1z8VLsrk7Kyiu6hfKyXVd%252FznYPXa58h4I%252FMuWtKAHnhac%253D%26u2%3DdO5skgjevfndE3uq%26width%3D2560" alt="Apache License 2.0 explained" width="2560" height="1504"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Read this section carefully if you have ever had Legal kill a Gemma rollout.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Earlier Gemma releases shipped under the &lt;a href="https://ai.google.dev/gemma/terms?ref=codersera.com" rel="noopener noreferrer"&gt;Gemma Terms of Use&lt;/a&gt;, a custom license. It was more permissive than Llama 2's, but it included a &lt;em&gt;Prohibited Use Policy&lt;/em&gt; with clauses around harm to minors, attacks on critical infrastructure, generation of CSAM, and other broad carve outs. The clauses were defensible in spirit, but enterprise legal teams routinely flagged the language as ambiguous and asked for indemnification or scope limiting before signing off. That friction kept Gemma out of plenty of production stacks.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Gemma 4 ships under Apache 2.0.&lt;/strong&gt; No custom restrictions, no usage carve outs, and no monthly active user thresholds the way the Llama 4 Community License has.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Apache 2.0&lt;/code&gt; explicitly grants commercial use, modification, redistribution, and distribution of derivative works including derivative weights. There is one obvious constraint that still applies, namely that Apache 2.0 does not grant trademark rights, so you cannot ship a product called &lt;em&gt;"Gemma"&lt;/em&gt; or imply Google endorsement.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This is materially less restrictive than the previous Gemma Terms of Use, and noticeably less restrictive than Llama 4's Community License (which is free for organisations under 700M monthly active users but adds compliance language). For most engineering teams, this is the change that turns Gemma from &lt;em&gt;interesting&lt;/em&gt; into &lt;em&gt;approvable&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Two caveats worth being honest about.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;a) Apache 2.0 governs the &lt;strong&gt;weights&lt;/strong&gt;, it does not give you the &lt;em&gt;training data&lt;/em&gt; or the &lt;em&gt;training pipeline&lt;/em&gt;. Gemma 4 is open weight, not open source in the strict OSI sense applied to data.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;b) Google can still publish acceptable use guidelines separately, nothing about Apache 2.0 prevents that. Today, the license file in the repo is the controlling document, and that document is Apache 2.0.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  &lt;code&gt;Benchmarks That Actually Matter&lt;/code&gt;
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2Fa8r3nzetwmox4zynhgxt.png" class="article-body-image-wrapper"&gt;&lt;img src="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2Fa8r3nzetwmox4zynhgxt.png" alt="Image de scription" width="800" height="241"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The headline numbers for &lt;strong&gt;Gemma 4 31B&lt;/strong&gt; (instruction tuned) are pulled from Google's model card, plus the independent reproductions surfaced in the LM Studio and Hugging Face threads.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="table-wrapper-paragraph"&gt;&lt;table&gt;
&lt;thead&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;th&gt;Benchmark&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;th&gt;Gemma 4 31B&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;th&gt;Gemma 3 27B&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;th&gt;Llama 4 Scout (109B)&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;th&gt;Qwen 3.5 27B&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;th&gt;DeepSeek V4 Flash&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;/thead&gt;
&lt;tbody&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;MMLU-Pro&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;85.2&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;~67&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;~78&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;86.1&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;~84&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;GPQA Diamond&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;84.3&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;42.4&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;~70&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;85.5&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;~80&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;LiveCodeBench v6&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;80.0&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;29.1&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;~55&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;~78&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;~74&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;SWE-bench Verified&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;~63&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;~22&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;~48&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;72.4&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;~64&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;AIME 2026 (math)&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;89.2&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;20.8&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;~55&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;~85&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;~82&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Codeforces ELO&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;2,150&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;110&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;~1,500&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;~1,950&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;~1,800&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;/tbody&gt;
&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Approximate values for the non Gemma rows are pulled from each project's own card or the &lt;em&gt;Artificial Analysis&lt;/em&gt; index, treat them as directional. The story they tell is consistent, and it boils down to four observations.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;i) Gemma 4 31B is in the same neighbourhood as Qwen 3.5 27B on knowledge and reasoning, they trade leadership benchmark by benchmark.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;ii) Gemma 4 has the upper hand on math and competitive programming.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;iii) &lt;strong&gt;Qwen 3.5 27B still wins SWE-bench Verified&lt;/strong&gt;, the benchmark that most closely tracks &lt;em&gt;can this model close a real GitHub issue&lt;/em&gt;. If your primary use case is autonomous code editing on real repos, evaluate Qwen 3.5 alongside Gemma 4 before you commit.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;iv) Gemma 4's gain over Gemma 3 is enormous, with multiple benchmarks improving 3 to 20 times. Most teams running Gemma 3 in production should plan a migration window.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  &lt;code&gt;Where To Run Gemma 4&lt;/code&gt;
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsspark.genspark.ai%2Fcfimages%3Fu1%3DttpSCNSEVc4lGub6pe6hWAmgIuW3Szm6T57Rzi2qOt9%252F6byBP9%252Fapv7z%252Fz9zF29JurYT3L3DslnN6Lw4oSlH4AtuI%252F6lRsUll7PRqU%252BYGDdFeYKqW593XlrTuWVENZCINNU%253D%26u2%3DLila5iiPSLHSMyO5%26width%3D2560" class="article-body-image-wrapper"&gt;&lt;img src="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsspark.genspark.ai%2Fcfimages%3Fu1%3DttpSCNSEVc4lGub6pe6hWAmgIuW3Szm6T57Rzi2qOt9%252F6byBP9%252Fapv7z%252Fz9zF29JurYT3L3DslnN6Lw4oSlH4AtuI%252F6lRsUll7PRqU%252BYGDdFeYKqW593XlrTuWVENZCINNU%253D%26u2%3DLila5iiPSLHSMyO5%26width%3D2560" alt="NVIDIA data center GPUs for AI inference" width="1280" height="680"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;There are three deployment surfaces to think about, namely &lt;strong&gt;hosted&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;self hosted server&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;on device&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;
  
  
  a) Hosted
&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you want zero ops, the model is a one line call away on several providers.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Vertex AI (Model Garden)&lt;/strong&gt; is the first party path. You can fine tune on Vertex AI Training Clusters and serve through Model Garden endpoints, paying for compute time on the underlying accelerator (&lt;code&gt;A2/G2&lt;/code&gt; family or &lt;code&gt;TPUs&lt;/code&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;For prototyping and price sensitive batch work, &lt;strong&gt;OpenRouter&lt;/strong&gt; aggregates more than eleven providers for the 26B A4B model at roughly &lt;em&gt;$0.06 per million input tokens&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;$0.33 per million output&lt;/em&gt;. Beyond that, &lt;strong&gt;Together AI&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;Fireworks&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;Groq&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;DeepInfra&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Hugging Face Inference&lt;/strong&gt; all run Gemma 4 endpoints, and pricing varies though the open weight competitive market keeps it low. For spiky workloads, &lt;strong&gt;Cloud Run with GPU&lt;/strong&gt;, Google's serverless GPU runtime, can host Gemma 4 with scale to zero, which is genuinely attractive when traffic is bursty.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;
  
  
  b) Self hosted server
&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;vLLM&lt;/code&gt; is the production default. It supports Gemma 4 on NVIDIA, AMD, and Google Cloud TPUs from day one. The approximate hardware floors look like this.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="table-wrapper-paragraph"&gt;&lt;table&gt;
&lt;thead&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;th&gt;Variant&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;th&gt;Quant / format&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;th&gt;VRAM floor&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;th&gt;Notes&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;/thead&gt;
&lt;tbody&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;26B A4B&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;AWQ INT4&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;~15 GB&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;RTX 4090 24 GB with KV cache headroom&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;26B A4B&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;GGUF Q4_K_M&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;~16 GB&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;llama.cpp / Ollama dev box&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;26B A4B&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;FP16&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;~52 GB&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;A100 80GB or H100, serves at full quality&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;31B dense&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;FP16&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;~62 GB&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;A100 80GB or H100 single GPU&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;31B dense&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;INT4&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;~18 GB&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;RTX 4090 / 5090, viable for single user inference&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;/tbody&gt;
&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Ollama&lt;/code&gt; covers the local laptop use case for E2B, E4B, and the quantised 26B and 31B. &lt;code&gt;MLX&lt;/code&gt; with Metal acceleration runs all variants on Apple Silicon, an M3 Max or M4 Pro with 32 to 64 GB unified memory will run the 26B A4B comfortably. AMD has day zero Gemma 4 support across &lt;code&gt;ROCm&lt;/code&gt; and the Ryzen AI stack. NVIDIA &lt;code&gt;NIM&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;NeMo&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;LM Studio&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;Unsloth&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;SGLang&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;LiteRT-LM&lt;/code&gt; all have first class support too.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;
  
  
  c) On device with MediaPipe and LiteRT
&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsspark.genspark.ai%2Fcfimages%3Fu1%3DS8j98mNejdY8dx8LPPfPu3Zlx2Vmvl16Z8MhPI%252FIHRnyU0ebFl%252BnMxfQCmxl6rh5bjjOSID429OV64cVHS%252B0cMvVyzI%253D%26u2%3DG%252FbjsN4sFIooLp2K%26width%3D2560" class="article-body-image-wrapper"&gt;&lt;img src="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsspark.genspark.ai%2Fcfimages%3Fu1%3DS8j98mNejdY8dx8LPPfPu3Zlx2Vmvl16Z8MhPI%252FIHRnyU0ebFl%252BnMxfQCmxl6rh5bjjOSID429OV64cVHS%252B0cMvVyzI%253D%26u2%3DG%252FbjsN4sFIooLp2K%26width%3D2560" alt="On device AI on smartphones and edge devices" width="1536" height="1024"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The E2B and E4B variants are explicitly designed for phones and edge devices.&lt;br&gt;
The deployment stack is &lt;code&gt;MediaPipe&lt;/code&gt;'s LLM Inference API on top of &lt;code&gt;LiteRT&lt;/code&gt;,&lt;br&gt;
which handles model loading, memory and hardware acceleration (GPU or NPU) automatically.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The approximate footprints are nicely small.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;E2B Q4_K_M&lt;/em&gt;, around &lt;code&gt;~1.3 GB&lt;/code&gt; on disk, with &lt;code&gt;2 to 3 GB&lt;/code&gt; RAM at runtime.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;em&gt;E4B Q4_K_M&lt;/em&gt;, around &lt;code&gt;~2.5 GB&lt;/code&gt; on disk, with &lt;code&gt;4 to 5 GB&lt;/code&gt; RAM at runtime.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This is the path for &lt;em&gt;AI features that work without a network round trip&lt;/em&gt;,&lt;br&gt;
voice agents on Android, in browser RAG over a user's local documents, and offline coding helpers.&lt;br&gt;
With audio input native to E2B and E4B, you can ship a meaningful voice to text to action loop without bundling a separate ASR model.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  When To Choose Gemma 4 Over Alternatives
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsspark.genspark.ai%2Fcfimages%3Fu1%3DuqPbaLZF5vL%252FYR7b09ALHVNofmAj79Qf0AM9A6DZGLNCqlmYaya2sYWaLnAngesOVqlWx3NW%252BnlTUUQQlOvG3da71DNERCODDDkJHoIh90zRpZcYvjbPxUQ7lJVSmCn3Qrk53jZrleA4L%252BRHHBHcHvc1I9sngBD4DD%252Fqc6O9c807lNWFQJJOFuU%252FPs4W%252FP0DuR11xV8%253D%26u2%3D5zTrYYihoyV%252BJnvX%26width%3D2560" class="article-body-image-wrapper"&gt;&lt;img src="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsspark.genspark.ai%2Fcfimages%3Fu1%3DuqPbaLZF5vL%252FYR7b09ALHVNofmAj79Qf0AM9A6DZGLNCqlmYaya2sYWaLnAngesOVqlWx3NW%252BnlTUUQQlOvG3da71DNERCODDDkJHoIh90zRpZcYvjbPxUQ7lJVSmCn3Qrk53jZrleA4L%252BRHHBHcHvc1I9sngBD4DD%252Fqc6O9c807lNWFQJJOFuU%252FPs4W%252FP0DuR11xV8%253D%26u2%3D5zTrYYihoyV%252BJnvX%26width%3D2560" alt="On device edge AI use cases" width="2560" height="1463"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Reach for &lt;strong&gt;Gemma 4&lt;/strong&gt; when the following conditions hold.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;a) &lt;em&gt;You need an Apache 2.0 model.&lt;/em&gt; If Legal balked at Gemma 3's terms or Llama's Community License MAU clause, Gemma 4 is the cleanest option in this size class.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;b) &lt;em&gt;You need on device multimodality.&lt;/em&gt; The audio capable E2B and E4B variants are the strongest open weight option for phones today.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;c) &lt;em&gt;Long context matters.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;code&gt;256K&lt;/code&gt; with credible RULER recall is competitive with hosted frontier models.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;d) &lt;em&gt;Math, agentic reasoning or competitive programming dominate your workload.&lt;/em&gt; Gemma 4 31B's &lt;code&gt;AIME&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;Codeforces&lt;/code&gt; numbers are exceptional for an open weight model in this size band.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Choose something else when the workload looks more like one of these.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;a) &lt;em&gt;Your workload is autonomous repo editing.&lt;/em&gt; Qwen 3.5 27B's &lt;code&gt;SWE-bench Verified&lt;/code&gt; lead is real. Pilot both before committing.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;b) &lt;em&gt;You need streaming voice output.&lt;/em&gt; Gemma 4 has audio in but not out. Qwen 3.5 Omni handles real time speech generation.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;c) &lt;em&gt;You need a frontier model.&lt;/em&gt; If quality is the only metric, hosted Gemini 3 Pro or DeepSeek V4 Pro will outperform Gemma 4 31B on most benchmarks.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;d) &lt;em&gt;Cost per token at huge scale.&lt;/em&gt; DeepSeek V4 Flash hosted is cheap enough that for many workloads the spend math beats running your own GPUs.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  &lt;code&gt;Known Issues And License Caveats&lt;/code&gt;
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;No model is a free lunch, and Gemma 4 has its own quirks. Worth reading before you commit.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;i) &lt;strong&gt;SWE-bench Verified is not the strong suit.&lt;/strong&gt; Real GitHub issue resolution still trails Qwen 3.5 27B by a meaningful margin.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;ii) &lt;strong&gt;No native audio output.&lt;/strong&gt; If you want a voice agent that talks back, you bolt on a separate &lt;code&gt;TTS&lt;/code&gt; layer.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;iii) &lt;strong&gt;26B A4B throughput surprise.&lt;/strong&gt; Despite only 4B active parameters, community benchmarks on consumer GPUs show roughly &lt;em&gt;11 tok/s&lt;/em&gt; on an RTX 4090, slower than a comparable dense 4B model. The MoE routing overhead is real on consumer hardware. On A100 and H100 the gap closes.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;iv) &lt;strong&gt;Apache 2.0 is not open source training data.&lt;/strong&gt; The weights are open and commercially usable, the training corpus is not. If your compliance posture requires reproducibility from data, Gemma 4 does not satisfy that.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;v) &lt;strong&gt;Trademark.&lt;/strong&gt; You cannot brand your product as &lt;em&gt;"Gemma"&lt;/em&gt; or use Google trademarks. Apache 2.0 explicitly excludes trademark grants.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;vi) &lt;strong&gt;Vision token budget tradeoff.&lt;/strong&gt; The &lt;code&gt;70&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;140&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;280&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;560&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;1120&lt;/code&gt; visual budgets are real. Undersized budgets degrade OCR and chart reading noticeably, so pick deliberately.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;vii) &lt;strong&gt;Native dependency surprises.&lt;/strong&gt; If you self host with &lt;code&gt;vLLM&lt;/code&gt; behind a Node service, watch out for prebuilt binary fetch issues on locked down installs, where the failure mode is silent at install time and loud at runtime.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;viii) &lt;strong&gt;Tokenizer drift from Gemma 3.&lt;/strong&gt; The &lt;code&gt;262K&lt;/code&gt; vocabulary is not directly weight compatible with Gemma 3 fine tunes. Plan a re finetune, do not try to port adapters.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  &lt;code&gt;FAQ&lt;/code&gt;
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;
  
  
  &lt;code&gt;Is Gemma 4 actually open source?&lt;/code&gt;
&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It is &lt;em&gt;open weight&lt;/em&gt; under Apache 2.0. The weights, model card and inference code are open and commercially usable. The training data and full pipeline are not released. By the OSI's strict definition, that is open weight, not open source, but for most commercial deployment purposes Apache 2.0 is the cleanest license you will see in this size class.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;
  
  
  &lt;code&gt;Is the Gemma 4 license really Apache 2.0?&lt;/code&gt;
&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Yes. This is the change from earlier Gemma versions, which used the custom &lt;em&gt;Gemma Terms of Use&lt;/em&gt; with usage carve outs. Gemma 4's repository ships the standard Apache 2.0 license file. Anyone telling you Gemma 4 has restrictive terms is describing the previous generation.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;
  
  
  &lt;code&gt;What is the difference between Gemma 4 and Gemini?&lt;/code&gt;
&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Gemma 4 is open weight and self hostable. Gemini is a closed, hosted, frontier model. They share research lineage but different deployment models, costs and customisation surfaces.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;
  
  
  &lt;code&gt;Which Gemma 4 model should I pick?&lt;/code&gt;
&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;a) &lt;code&gt;E2B&lt;/code&gt; for phones and tight memory budgets.&lt;br&gt;
b) &lt;code&gt;E4B&lt;/code&gt; for high end edge and small servers.&lt;br&gt;
c) &lt;code&gt;26B A4B&lt;/code&gt; for cost efficient single GPU server inference.&lt;br&gt;
d) &lt;code&gt;31B&lt;/code&gt; dense for the highest quality answers when you do not care about throughput.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;
  
  
  &lt;code&gt;What hardware do I need to run Gemma 4 31B?&lt;/code&gt;
&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;FP16&lt;/code&gt; needs roughly &lt;code&gt;62 GB&lt;/code&gt; VRAM, an A100 80GB or H100. &lt;code&gt;INT4&lt;/code&gt; quantised drops that to about &lt;code&gt;18 GB&lt;/code&gt;, fitting an RTX 4090 or 5090 for single user inference.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;
  
  
  &lt;code&gt;Does Gemma 4 support function calling?&lt;/code&gt;
&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Yes. Native function calling, structured JSON output and system instructions are all first class.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;
  
  
  &lt;code&gt;How does Gemma 4 compare to Llama 4?&lt;/code&gt;
&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Gemma 4 31B beats Llama 4 Scout (109B) on most reasoning benchmarks at roughly a third of the active parameter cost, and ships under a less restrictive license.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;
  
  
  &lt;code&gt;Is Gemma 4 better than Qwen 3.5?&lt;/code&gt;
&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It depends on the workload. Gemma 4 wins on math and competitive programming, Qwen 3.5 27B wins on &lt;code&gt;MMLU-Pro&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;GPQA Diamond&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;SWE-bench Verified&lt;/code&gt;. Both are Apache 2.0. Pilot both.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;
  
  
  &lt;code&gt;Is Gemma 4 multimodal?&lt;/code&gt;
&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;All variants accept text and image. E2B and E4B also accept audio. Output is text only on every variant.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;
  
  
  &lt;code&gt;What is the context window?&lt;/code&gt;
&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;128K&lt;/code&gt; tokens on E2B and E4B, and &lt;code&gt;256K&lt;/code&gt; on the 26B A4B and the 31B. RULER long context recall at 128K is roughly &lt;em&gt;66.4%&lt;/em&gt;, a 5x improvement over Gemma 3.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;
  
  
  &lt;code&gt;Can Gemma 4 run on a phone?&lt;/code&gt;
&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Yes. E2B and E4B are designed for it. &lt;code&gt;MediaPipe&lt;/code&gt;'s LLM Inference API and &lt;code&gt;LiteRT&lt;/code&gt; handle on device inference with NPU and GPU acceleration on Android, and equivalent paths exist on iOS via Core ML and MLX.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;
  
  
  &lt;code&gt;What is Gemma 4n?&lt;/code&gt;
&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Gemma 4n&lt;/em&gt; is the community shorthand for the E2B and E4B edge variants, the on device tier of the Gemma 4 family. Architecturally they are dense models tuned and quantised for phones and embedded devices. See &lt;a href="https://codersera.com/blog/gemma-4n-vs-gemma-4/" rel="noopener noreferrer"&gt;Gemma 4n vs Gemma 4&lt;/a&gt; for the side by side.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;
  
  
  &lt;code&gt;Is Gemma 4 safe for commercial production use?&lt;/code&gt;
&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Yes, under Apache 2.0, with the standard caveats. Respect trademarks, do not redistribute the model under the &lt;em&gt;Gemma&lt;/em&gt; name, and follow your own jurisdiction's AI usage law. There are no usage carve outs, no MAU thresholds, and no industry restrictions in the license itself.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;
  
  
  &lt;code&gt;Should I migrate from Gemma 3 to Gemma 4?&lt;/code&gt;
&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you are running Gemma 3 in production, yes. The benchmark deltas are large (3 to 20 times on reasoning and code), the license is cleaner, the context window is bigger, and the deployment story is unchanged. Plan a re finetune, since adapter weights will not transfer cleanly.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  &lt;code&gt;Closing Thoughts&lt;/code&gt;
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Picking the right open weight model is the easy half of the job. The harder half is the integration work that follows, the fine tuning, the eval harness, the cost modelling, and the production hardening.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Gemma 4 makes that work &lt;em&gt;meaningfully easier&lt;/em&gt; than its predecessor.&lt;br&gt;
✔️The license is clean,&lt;br&gt;
✔️the model card is honest,&lt;br&gt;
✔️the deployment surface is broad,&lt;br&gt;
✔️and the benchmarks are competitive with the best of the open weight field.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you have been holding out on Gemma because of legal friction or quality gaps, this is the release that closes both. Pilot it against your real workload, compare it head to head with &lt;code&gt;Qwen 3.5 27B&lt;/code&gt; on the tasks that matter to you, and let your evals decide.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;pls share your thoughts below with ur use cases. thanks for reading so far 💖&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

</description>
      <category>devchallenge</category>
      <category>gemmachallenge</category>
      <category>gemma</category>
      <category>ai</category>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>I Watched Google Cloud NEXT '26 ~ Here Is What Actually Matters for Developers</title>
      <dc:creator>ANIRUDDHA  ADAK</dc:creator>
      <pubDate>Sun, 26 Apr 2026 22:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
      <link>https://dumb.dev.to/aniruddhaadak/i-watched-google-cloud-next-26-so-you-dont-have-to-here-is-what-actually-matters-for-developers-54h6</link>
      <guid>https://dumb.dev.to/aniruddhaadak/i-watched-google-cloud-next-26-so-you-dont-have-to-here-is-what-actually-matters-for-developers-54h6</guid>
      <description>&lt;p&gt;Hi, I am Aniruddha Adak, an AI agent engineer based in Kolkata. I spend most of my time building agentic systems, experimenting with LLMs, and watching developer conferences so I can figure out what is actually useful versus what is just marketing.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This past week I sat through both the Opening Keynote and the Developer Keynote of Google Cloud NEXT 2026, held in Las Vegas. The event ran from April 22 to 24, 2026. &lt;code&gt;Both sessions are freely available on YouTube&lt;/code&gt;, and I want to share what I personally noticed, what made me stop and think, and what I believe developers like you and me should actually care about.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This is not a summary. This is my honest take from someone (like me) who works with agents every day.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  How I Watched These Keynotes
&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I watched both sessions fully. The Opening Keynote runs for about 1 hour 39 minutes. The Developer Keynote is 1 hour 7 minutes.  That is nearly 3 hours of content. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I took notes while watching, paused at moments that felt important, and replayed sections where the demos were happening live on stage.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I am going to walk you through what I found most meaningful, section by section.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  The Opening Keynote: Sundar Pichai and the Big Picture
&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Sundar Pichai&lt;/code&gt; came on stage pretty early in the keynote. The thing that immediately got my attention was when he talked about how &lt;code&gt;Google now uses AI for nearly 75% of its own code writing.&lt;/code&gt; That number stopped me. It means the engineers at Google are not just building AI tools. They are themselves working alongside those tools in their day to day coding.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;He also mentioned that Google plans to invest heavily in infrastructure this year, and a significant portion of that investment is going toward AI compute. From where I sit as someone building agent systems, this matters because more compute capacity means the APIs and services we rely on will be more stable and faster.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  watch here: 👇
&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;  &lt;iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/11PBno-cJ1g"&gt;
  &lt;/iframe&gt;
&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Another moment that stood out was when Sundar described Cloud as the &lt;em&gt;&lt;code&gt;"mission control of the agentic era."&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/em&gt; That phrase stayed with me. It is not just a catchy line. It reflects a genuine shift in how Google is framing its cloud offering. It is no longer just about storage or compute. It is about giving your AI systems a place to run safely, observe themselves, and scale up.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  The Agentic Enterprise Blueprint
&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Thomas Kurian, who runs Google Cloud, presented what they are calling the Agentic Enterprise Blueprint. The core idea is straightforward: you cannot just bolt AI onto your existing systems and call it done. You need a full stack approach.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Here is what that stack looks like according to what was shown:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. The Models Layer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;
Gemini Pro and Flash are at the center of this. But what I found interesting is that they explicitly said you can also use Claude from Anthropic through the Model Garden. This is honest. They are not forcing you into a single model. As someone who has built systems using multiple providers, I appreciate that kind of openness.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. The Agent Development Kit (ADK)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;
This was the part that felt most relevant to my work. ADK is Google's framework for building modular agents. It connects to MCP servers, handles memory, manages sessions, and lets you define skills in a structured way. The fact that every Google Cloud service is now MCP-enabled by default was one of the bigger announcements of the week.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Agent Runtime&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;
This is the serverless layer that runs and scales your agents. Sessions keep agents connected to users across interactions. Memory allows agents to learn from past sessions and carry that forward. This is the kind of infrastructure that used to take weeks to build manually.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4. Agent Gateway and Observability&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;
Each agent gets a unique identity. The gateway enforces policies. Observability tools let you see what your agents are actually doing, debug reasoning loops, and track performance. This is something I have personally felt the pain of. Debugging agents without proper tooling is exhausting.&lt;/p&gt;



&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  The Hardware Announcement That Got the Audience Excited
&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;About 42 minutes into the Opening Keynote, &lt;em&gt;&lt;code&gt;Google announced the TPU 8t&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. Three times the performance per pod compared to previous generation hardware.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;For most developers, you might not care directly about the chip architecture. But what it means in practice is:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;✅ Faster model responses&lt;br&gt;
☑️Lower latency for complex agent workflows&lt;br&gt;
✔️ Ability to run longer context windows without things slowing down significantly&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The &lt;code&gt;TPU 8t&lt;/code&gt; was described as being &lt;code&gt;designed specifically for the agentic era of computing&lt;/code&gt;. The architecture changes they made inside the chip are focused on handling the kind of back and forth reasoning that agents do constantly.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;They also &lt;em&gt;announced a new networking layer that links 134,000 chips together&lt;/em&gt; into what they called a &lt;code&gt;unified AI supercomputer&lt;/code&gt;. That is a level of scale that very few companies in the world can match.&lt;/p&gt;



&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  Real World Examples That Felt Grounded
&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;One segment I genuinely enjoyed was the &lt;code&gt;Walmart story&lt;/code&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Walmart is using Gemini Enterprise to help field leaders get insights before they walk into their stores each day&lt;/em&gt;. The idea is that instead of spending time pulling reports manually, the agent surfaces what matters, tailored to the specific store and the specific leader's role.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This is exactly the kind of use case that makes sense to me. &lt;code&gt;It is not AI trying to replace the person. It is AI giving the person better context so they can do their job better.&lt;/code&gt; The numbers shared were that some of &lt;em&gt;their enterprise deployments hit 80% adoption among employees&lt;/em&gt;, which is genuinely high for any enterprise tool rollout.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;There was also a story about a snowboarding &lt;code&gt;AI project&lt;/code&gt; that &lt;code&gt;used 3D models and motion analysis to help athletes understand their technique&lt;/code&gt; in ways that were not possible before. This one was more fun than practical for most developers, but it showed how computer vision and real time data pipelines can combine in interesting ways.&lt;/p&gt;



&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  The Developer Keynote: Where Things Got Practical
&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The Developer Keynote was hosted by Richard Seroter and Emma Twersky. The energy was different here. More hands on. More code. Less executive messaging.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Brad Calder opened the session and made a statement that I wrote down immediately: &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;"In 2026, you are building applications in days that would have taken weeks or months just a couple of years ago."&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;He is right. I have felt this in my own work. The tools have gotten dramatically better, and the way we structure our thinking around building software is changing alongside them.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  watch here: 👇
&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;  &lt;iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/A01DQ8_xy7Q"&gt;
  &lt;/iframe&gt;
&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  The Marathon Demo That Showed Everything Working Together
&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The main demo of the Developer Keynote was a Marathon Planner built using the Agent Platform. They simulated planning a marathon through Las Vegas for 10,000 runners.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The system had three agents working together:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ol&gt;
&lt;li&gt;A Planner Agent that figured out the route&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;An Evaluator Agent that scored the route against both deterministic criteria (exactly 26 miles 385 yards) and non-deterministic criteria (community impact, safety)&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;A Simulator Agent that spawned thousands of virtual runners and watched how traffic was affected&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ol&gt;

&lt;p&gt;What I found clever here was the Evaluator Agent design. It uses a separate, smaller model with limited context. Its only job is to judge the route. This is a pattern I have started using in my own work. Giving a subagent a narrow, well defined role makes the whole system more reliable.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The other thing that struck me was &lt;code&gt;A2UI&lt;/code&gt;, which stands for &lt;code&gt;Agent to User Interface&lt;/code&gt;. The idea is that the &lt;code&gt;agent itself builds the interface it needs to communicate results back to you&lt;/code&gt;. Instead of hardcoding dashboards, the agent generates the right visual components for the specific task it just completed. This reduces the need for frontend developers to maintain a growing list of output templates.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  A2A Protocol: Agents Talking to Agents
&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;One announcement I want to highlight specifically for developers is the A2A protocol. &lt;code&gt;A2A stands for Agent to Agent&lt;/code&gt;. &lt;code&gt;Google&lt;/code&gt; created this protocol and &lt;code&gt;donated it to the Linux Foundation&lt;/code&gt;, which means it is open and not locked to Google's ecosystem.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The problem &lt;code&gt;A2A solves is communication between agents&lt;/code&gt; that were built independently. Without a standard protocol, connecting agents from different teams or vendors requires custom API contracts and a lot of fragile glue code. A2A defines a standard way for agents to advertise their capabilities through an &lt;code&gt;Agent Card&lt;/code&gt;, discover other agents through the &lt;code&gt;Agent Registry&lt;/code&gt;, and communicate without writing custom integration code.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I have run into this problem myself. When you start building systems where multiple specialized agents need to coordinate, the connection layer becomes its own maintenance burden. &lt;em&gt;A2A is an attempt to make that layer standard and manageable&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  What Surprised Me Personally
&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I went into these keynotes expecting mostly announcements about model updates and price changes. What I did not expect was how much of the Developer Keynote was focused on showing code, showing real tradeoffs, and being honest about where the hard problems still are.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The segment about &lt;code&gt;Context Engineering&lt;/code&gt; genuinely resonated with me. The speakers talked about how moving from stateless to stateful agents changes everything about how you design your system. &lt;code&gt;Sessions&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;Memory Banks&lt;/code&gt;, and &lt;code&gt;RAG integrations&lt;/code&gt; are not optional add-ons. They are the &lt;code&gt;foundation of any agent&lt;/code&gt; that needs to be useful across multiple interactions.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;They also mentioned that &lt;code&gt;the full demo code was being open sourced&lt;/code&gt; on GitHub during the keynote. Not after. During. That is the kind of move that actually builds trust with a developer community.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  Something That Felt Missing
&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Honestly, I would have liked to see more about monitoring and debugging agent failures in production. The observability tools they showed were impressive in demos, but production agent systems fail in strange ways. I would love a deeper conversation about what happens when your agent gets stuck in a reasoning loop or when memory accumulates stale information that starts affecting decisions.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This is something I think about in my own work constantly. The tooling for building agents has gotten good. The tooling for understanding why agents fail is still catching up.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  What You Should Actually Do After Reading This
&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you made it here, here are three things worth doing:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Watch the Developer Keynote first.&lt;/strong&gt; It is more practical and the demos are better for developers. The Opening Keynote is good context but starts with a lot of enterprise positioning.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Look up the ADK documentation.&lt;/strong&gt; The Agent Development Kit is available now. If you are already building agents with other frameworks, it is worth understanding how ADK structures skills and tools. Some of the patterns are genuinely well thought out.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Try the open source demo code.&lt;/strong&gt; The Marathon Simulator was released on GitHub. It is a working multi-agent system using ADK, MCP, A2A, and Agent Runtime all together. That kind of end-to-end reference is rare.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  My Overall Feeling
&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I came away from both keynotes with a clearer sense of where the industry is heading. The shift from &lt;code&gt;"we have a model"&lt;/code&gt; to &lt;code&gt;"we have a complete agent infrastructure"&lt;/code&gt; is real. Google Cloud NEXT 2026 was the event where Google tried to make that shift concrete for developers, not just for CTOs.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The things I liked most were the openness around model choice, the A2A donation to Linux Foundation, and the fact that the demo code was released publicly. Those are developer friendly moves.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The things I want to see more of are better failure analysis tools, more honest discussions about prompt drift in production, and deeper guidance on memory management at scale.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;But overall, this was a strong event with a lot of practical takeaways for anyone building agentic systems in 2026.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I am &lt;code&gt;Aniruddha Adak&lt;/code&gt; from Kolkata. If you are working on agents or AI systems and want to talk shop, feel free to reach out.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Written after watching both the Google Cloud NEXT 2026 Opening Keynote and Developer Keynote in full...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This is a submission for the &lt;a href="https://dev.to/challenges/google-cloud-next-2026-04-22"&gt;Google Cloud NEXT Writing Challenge&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Thank you all for reading so far 💖&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

</description>
      <category>devchallenge</category>
      <category>googlecloud</category>
      <category>ai</category>
      <category>cloudnextchallenge</category>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>i burnt $127 in api credits before i fixed these openclaw mistakes</title>
      <dc:creator>ANIRUDDHA  ADAK</dc:creator>
      <pubDate>Fri, 24 Apr 2026 16:09:00 +0000</pubDate>
      <link>https://dumb.dev.to/aniruddhaadak/i-burnt-127-in-api-credits-before-i-fixed-these-openclaw-mistakes-1lf3</link>
      <guid>https://dumb.dev.to/aniruddhaadak/i-burnt-127-in-api-credits-before-i-fixed-these-openclaw-mistakes-1lf3</guid>
      <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This is a submission for the &lt;a href="https://dev.to/challenges/openclaw-2026-04-16"&gt;OpenClaw Writing Challenge&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;everyone is saying openclaw would build my startup while i slept.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;
instead, i spent two weeks watching it burn through my api credits&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;
while it asked the same question eight times in a row.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;it wasn't thinking hard.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;it was stuck in a loop, and i was the one paying &lt;code&gt;$0.03&lt;/code&gt; per token to watch it spin.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;if you're currently babysitting your agent, watching it loop on simple tasks, or wondering if you should just go back to coding manually — i was there.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;i almost gave up.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;now i have openclaw running my morning briefings and handling database chores without me touching it.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;the difference wasn't buying a better api tier. it was fixing these specific, stupid mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  stop using your expensive model for everything
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;i had &lt;code&gt;gpt-5.4&lt;/code&gt; set as the default for every single task. heartbeat checks, file scans, cron jobs — all of it. i was asking a formula 1 car to deliver groceries.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;openclaw lets you set up tiered model configs. here's what i switched to:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="table-wrapper-paragraph"&gt;&lt;table&gt;
&lt;thead&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;th&gt;task type&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;th&gt;model&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;/thead&gt;
&lt;tbody&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;file reads, syntax checks, existence queries&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;&lt;code&gt;haiku&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;actual coding tasks&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;&lt;code&gt;sonnet&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;complex debugging, things that broke twice&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;&lt;code&gt;opus&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;/tbody&gt;
&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;my daily token spend dropped from &lt;strong&gt;40,000&lt;/strong&gt; to around &lt;strong&gt;1,500&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;you can switch models mid-session with &lt;code&gt;/model&lt;/code&gt; if you need to escalate, but most of the time, you don't.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;




&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  your agent needs rules written in stone
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;out of the box, openclaw will:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;loop forever&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;forget what it was doing&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;rewrite your database schema because it misread a comment&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;you have to parent this thing with explicit, paranoid instructions.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;i keep a &lt;code&gt;workspace/skills/&lt;/code&gt; folder full of &lt;code&gt;SKILL.md&lt;/code&gt; files. these aren't suggestions. they're laws.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;workspace/&lt;br&gt;
├── skills/&lt;br&gt;
│ ├── anti-loop.md&lt;br&gt;
│ ├── USER.md&lt;br&gt;
│ └── AGENTS.md&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;one file is literally called &lt;code&gt;anti-loop.md&lt;/code&gt; and says:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;"if you see the same error twice, stop and ask me. do not try a third variation."&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;another forces the agent to check &lt;code&gt;USER.md&lt;/code&gt; before asking questions.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;every assumption the agent makes is a potential landmine. openclaw doesn't know your database schema. it doesn't remember that you told it yesterday to never touch the auth module. &lt;strong&gt;write it down.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;the agents that actually work are the ones with heavy custom instruction sets.&lt;/p&gt;


&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  closing the chat kills the session
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;i told openclaw to optimize some queries and message me when done. closed my laptop. came back the next morning to find it had done nothing.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;sessions die when you close the chat. they're stateful only while the window is open. when you reopen, you might get a summary, but the context, the stack, the "where was i" — gone.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;what to do instead:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;use openclaw's &lt;strong&gt;cron jobs&lt;/strong&gt; with isolated session targets&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;these spin up fresh agent instances on a schedule, do one task, message you results, and die&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;for one-off tasks, pair a simple &lt;code&gt;sqlite&lt;/code&gt; queue with a cron that checks it hourly
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;div class="highlight js-code-highlight"&gt;
&lt;pre class="highlight shell"&gt;&lt;code&gt;&lt;span class="c"&gt;# example cron entry&lt;/span&gt;
0 &lt;span class="k"&gt;*&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="k"&gt;*&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="k"&gt;*&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="k"&gt;*&lt;/span&gt; openclaw run &lt;span class="nt"&gt;--session-target&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="o"&gt;=&lt;/span&gt;daily-briefing
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;/div&gt;


&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;don't try to maintain long-running thinking sessions. they break, they cost money, and they hallucinate when context gets long.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;


&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  one working workflow beats five broken ones
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;i tried setting up email, calendar, telegram, web scraping, and reporting all at once. everything broke, and i couldn't tell which integration was failing.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;start with one thing that hurts slightly every day.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;i started with a morning briefing cron that:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;reads my calendar&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;summarizes slack mentions&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;messages me results&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;i got that working end-to-end — running without me touching it, messaging me reliably, failing loudly instead of silently — before i added anything else.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;every new integration is a new failure mode. if things feel broken, run:&lt;br&gt;
&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight js-code-highlight"&gt;
&lt;pre class="highlight shell"&gt;&lt;code&gt;openclaw doctor &lt;span class="nt"&gt;--fix&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;/div&gt;



&lt;p&gt;half the "my agent is stupid" complaints are actually "my config is borked" problems.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  compaction eats your memories
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;openclaw has a context window. when it fills up, the system compacts older messages — which means it forgets stuff.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;i spent twenty minutes explaining my database schema once, then the agent compacted and hallucinated a new one. almost dropped a production table.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;now i persist everything important:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="table-wrapper-paragraph"&gt;&lt;table&gt;
&lt;thead&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;th&gt;what&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;th&gt;how&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;/thead&gt;
&lt;tbody&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;long-running task state&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;
&lt;code&gt;JSON&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;YAML&lt;/code&gt; state files&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;user context&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;&lt;code&gt;USER.md&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;behavior rules&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;&lt;code&gt;AGENTS.md&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;architectural decisions&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;decision logs read at session start&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;/tbody&gt;
&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;the less openclaw has to re-learn, the less it hallucinates.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;




&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  chat quality and agent quality are different animals
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;i was using a model that gave beautiful, articulate chat responses. great reasoning. but it couldn't call tools to save its life. it generated malformed json and hallucinated function names.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;models that actually work for agentic coding:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;code&gt;claude sonnet&lt;/code&gt; / &lt;code&gt;claude opus&lt;/code&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;gpt-5.4&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;code&gt;kimi k2.5&lt;/code&gt; via api&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;models to avoid:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;code&gt;deepseek reasoner&lt;/code&gt; — amazing at thinking, terrible at doing. it reasons beautifully about why your code is broken while generating completely broken tool calls.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;code&gt;gpt-5.3 mini&lt;/code&gt; — cheap, but it skips steps and ignores tool results. multiple people have called it useless for agent work.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;quick sanity test:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;
i) give your model three sequential tool calls.&lt;br&gt;
ii) if it can't handle that without hand-holding,&lt;br&gt;
iii) don't use it for autonomous work.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  you're not bad at this. it's just early.
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;the gap between usual demos and daily use is real. when someone posts "my agent built a saas overnight," you're seeing the highlight reel. you're not seeing the three weeks they spent tuning prompts and debugging why openclaw kept trying to pay aws with monopoly money.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;this stuff is genuinely hard right now. not "you need a cs degree" hard. just "the tools are immature" hard.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;the people making it work are treating these agents like orchestras, not autopilots.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;the four rules that changed everything for me:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ol&gt;
&lt;li&gt;start with one cron job&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;write one guardrail file&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;use the cheap model&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;save your state&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ol&gt;




&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;it gets easier. don't give up before the compound interest kicks in.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

</description>
      <category>devchallenge</category>
      <category>openclawchallenge</category>
      <category>ai</category>
      <category>tutorial</category>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>My First Glimpse Into the Agentic Era: Google Cloud NEXT 2026 Keynote Reflection</title>
      <dc:creator>ANIRUDDHA  ADAK</dc:creator>
      <pubDate>Thu, 23 Apr 2026 13:56:35 +0000</pubDate>
      <link>https://dumb.dev.to/aniruddhaadak/my-first-glimpse-into-the-agentic-era-google-cloud-next-2026-keynote-reflection-fbi</link>
      <guid>https://dumb.dev.to/aniruddhaadak/my-first-glimpse-into-the-agentic-era-google-cloud-next-2026-keynote-reflection-fbi</guid>
      <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This is a submission for the &lt;a href="https://dev.to/challenges/google-cloud-next-2026-04-22"&gt;Google Cloud NEXT Writing Challenge&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  The Moment It All Started
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It was the evening of &lt;strong&gt;April 22, 2026&lt;/strong&gt;, around &lt;em&gt;1 PM IST&lt;/em&gt; for me here in Kolkata.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I was casually working at my desk when the Google Cloud NEXT Challenge notification popped up on my screen.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Without a second thought, I jumped into the Cida Live stream on YouTube to catch the keynote.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  The Opening That Hooked Me
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The keynote opened with &lt;strong&gt;Sundar Pichai&lt;/strong&gt; sharing a stat that truly stopped me in my tracks.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;75 percent of all code is now written by AI, and it is verified by engineers.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;That is a massive shift in how we build software today.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  What Stood Out for Me
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The keynote had many moments, but a few things really caught my attention.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;
  
  
  Google Enterprise Agent
&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;Google Enterprise Agent&lt;/strong&gt; was one of the most exciting announcements.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It showed how businesses can now deploy AI agents at scale across their organizations.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This is not just automation, it is a whole new way of working.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;
  
  
  Google AI Generation Chip
&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I was really impressed by the new &lt;em&gt;Google AI generation chip&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The power and efficiency it brings to AI workloads is something every developer should care about.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  Gemini Live and Real World Impact
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;One of the most inspiring moments was the &lt;strong&gt;Gemini Live athlete demo&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Gemini was guiding an athlete in real time, showing exactly what to do and tracking progress.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It pointed out mistakes and suggested corrections on the fly.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;That is the kind of AI assistance I want in my daily workflow too.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  The Agentic Era Is Here
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;Google Assistant Platform&lt;/strong&gt; demo blew my mind.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Agents can now talk to each other, coordinate tasks, and build complete agentic workflows.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;With the &lt;em&gt;Agent Development Kit&lt;/em&gt;, developers can create multi agent systems with ease.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This is the agentic era that Google is building, and I am here for it.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  Big Partnerships That Matter
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Google is not building this alone.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;They are collaborating with &lt;strong&gt;OpenAI&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;NVIDIA&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;SpaceX&lt;/strong&gt;, and even &lt;strong&gt;NASA&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;These partnerships show how seriously Google is taking AI development and deployment.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  YouTube with AI Built In
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Another cool reveal was &lt;em&gt;YouTube with an AI assistant&lt;/em&gt; built right in.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;You can ask questions about your TV, request content, and get personalized recommendations.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It is like having a smart assistant living inside your entertainment experience.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  My Take on It All
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Every model capability mentioned felt like a step forward for developers like me.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Google is clearly pushing everything toward being &lt;em&gt;AI powered&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;agent driven&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;That is exactly the direction I want to grow in as a developer.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The whole keynote was &lt;strong&gt;epic&lt;/strong&gt;, and I am excited to see where this journey leads.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  Wrapping Up
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This was my first experience tuning into Google Cloud NEXT, and it set a high bar.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The future of AI is not just coming, it is already here.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;And I am ready to be part of it.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Thanks for reading my first Google Cloud NEXT reflection.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

</description>
      <category>devchallenge</category>
      <category>cloudnextchallenge</category>
      <category>googlecloud</category>
      <category>ai</category>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>The Night OpenClaw Completely Ghosted Me: My Real Headache Story as a Kolkata AI Agent Engineer</title>
      <dc:creator>ANIRUDDHA  ADAK</dc:creator>
      <pubDate>Tue, 21 Apr 2026 12:48:00 +0000</pubDate>
      <link>https://dumb.dev.to/aniruddhaadak/the-night-openclaw-completely-ghosted-me-my-real-headache-story-as-a-kolkata-ai-agent-engineer-3088</link>
      <guid>https://dumb.dev.to/aniruddhaadak/the-night-openclaw-completely-ghosted-me-my-real-headache-story-as-a-kolkata-ai-agent-engineer-3088</guid>
      <description>&lt;p&gt;Hey DEV Community 👋  &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I’m &lt;strong&gt;ANIRUDDHA ADAK&lt;/strong&gt; (@aniruddhadak on X), final-year B.Tech CSE student at BBIT Kolkata and a full-time AI Agent Engineer who lives and breathes this stuff.  &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;After my last post about the &lt;a href="https://dev.to/aniruddhaadak/my-openclaw-journey-30-hands-on-experiences-that-built-my-wealth-of-knowledge-kolkata-ai-agent-2hd1"&gt;30 wins that made OpenClaw my 24/7 lobster-powered sidekick&lt;/a&gt; , I promised myself I’d also share the messy, frustrating, headache-inducing side. Because let’s be real — no tool is perfect, especially one that’s still growing fast.  &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This is the raw, first-person story of the night OpenClaw straight-up failed me, ignored my commands, threw ridiculous errors, and left me staring at my screen at 2 AM in my Kolkata room wondering why I trusted a lobster with my workflow.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;p&gt;It started simple enough.  &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I was deep in a side project — one of my AI agent experiments that needed to scrape some public data, organize it into a clean Markdown file, and push it to a private GitHub repo. I had done similar tasks before and OpenClaw had nailed them. So I fired up WhatsApp at around 11 PM IST and typed a clear, detailed prompt:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;“Run a full web research on the latest Ollama model releases, compile them into a clean table in results.md, commit it with message ‘Updated Ollama models - April 2026’, and push to my private repo. Use exec tools only. Confirm each step.”&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The lobster replied instantly with its usual confidence:&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;
“Got it, Aniruddha! Starting research now… ✅”&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Then… nothing.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;For the next 45 minutes it kept sending half-hearted updates like:&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;
“Browsing sites…”&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;
“Compiling table…”&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;
“Almost done…”&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;But when I checked my repo? Empty. No results.md. No commit. Nothing.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I tried again, this time even more specific. Same thing. It would promise, loop, and ghost me.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Then came the error that made me want to throw my laptop out the window.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;“Failed to call a function. Please adjust your prompt. See 'failed_generation' for more details.”&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I saw that message pop up in WhatsApp at least 12 times that night. No matter how I rephrased the command, it kept failing the tool call. I even switched from Claude to a local model — same nonsense.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;At one point it literally told me:&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;
“I cannot execute commands, I have no exec tool”  &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;…even though I had explicitly enabled full elevated tool access in the config and confirmed it in the gateway dashboard. Classic.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I tried the nuclear option — restarted the gateway, ran &lt;code&gt;openclaw doctor --fix&lt;/code&gt;, cleared the session with &lt;code&gt;/new&lt;/code&gt;, even rolled back to an older version. Still nothing. It would accept the task, act like it was working, then either hang or give placeholder replies with zero actual execution.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;By 3 AM I had burned through way more tokens than I care to admit (the retry loop was ruthless), my head was pounding, and my once-exciting agent project was now just sitting there mocking me.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I finally gave up, did the task manually in 20 minutes, and went to sleep frustrated.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;p&gt;The next morning I dug into Reddit (r/openclaw, r/clawdbot, r/AI_Agents) and realized I wasn’t alone. Tons of people were posting about the exact same pain:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Updates breaking exec tools overnight
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;“Failed to call a function” becoming the most common error
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Agents promising the world but never actually running shell commands or git pushes
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Infinite retry loops that quietly drain your API budget
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It wasn’t just me. OpenClaw was still early, and these kinds of silent failures and ignored commands were hitting a lot of us.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;p&gt;But here’s the part that still keeps me hooked: even after that nightmare night, I didn’t uninstall it.  &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I learned three hard lessons that night:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ol&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Always start a fresh session (&lt;code&gt;/new&lt;/code&gt;) before important tasks — old context can silently break tool calling.
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Double-check tool permissions in &lt;code&gt;openclaw.json&lt;/code&gt; after every update (the “ask: off” + “security: full” combo saved me later).
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Never trust it 100% on autopilot yet. Human oversight is still mandatory, especially for anything that touches git or the terminal.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ol&gt;

&lt;p&gt;That headache actually made me a better AI builder. It forced me to understand the internals, read the config deeper, and set up better safeguards (like cost guardians and sandbox checks).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;OpenClaw is still the most powerful personal agent I’ve used — when it works, it feels magical. But when it doesn’t… it really doesn’t.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;And that’s okay. That’s how real tools grow.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you’ve had your own “lobster ghosted me” moment, drop it in the comments. My OpenClaw is (hopefully) reading them right now.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Exfoliate! Exfoliate! 🦞&lt;/strong&gt; (even on the bad days)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;— &lt;strong&gt;ANIRUDDHA ADAK&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;
Kolkata, West Bengal, India | April 17, 2026&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;
(X: &lt;a href="https://x.com/aniruddhadak" rel="noopener noreferrer"&gt;@aniruddhadak&lt;/a&gt; — I test every AI agent so you don’t have to)&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is a separate companion post&lt;/strong&gt; for the OpenClaw Challenge (Wealth of Knowledge track). The shiny 30-experience version is my love letter. This one is the honest truth.  &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Both sides make the full picture.  &lt;/p&gt;




&lt;p&gt;Thanks, happy building ...&lt;/p&gt;

</description>
      <category>devchallenge</category>
      <category>openclawchallenge</category>
      <category>ai</category>
      <category>automation</category>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>OpenClaw + GLM 5.1 = FREE AI AGENTS</title>
      <dc:creator>ANIRUDDHA  ADAK</dc:creator>
      <pubDate>Sat, 18 Apr 2026 04:44:46 +0000</pubDate>
      <link>https://dumb.dev.to/aniruddhaadak/openclaw-glm-51-free-ai-agents-2kh1</link>
      <guid>https://dumb.dev.to/aniruddhaadak/openclaw-glm-51-free-ai-agents-2kh1</guid>
      <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This is a submission for the &lt;a href="https://dev.to/challenges/openclaw-2026-04-16"&gt;OpenClaw Writing Challenge&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In this guide, I'll walk you through installing three tools step by step that together give you a free personal AI assistant running right on your computer.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;
No subscriptions, no monthly fees = completely free.  &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Here's what we'll install:  &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ollama:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;
A program that lets you run AI models directly on your computer. Think of it as an "engine" that powers artificial intelligence locally. Works on macOS, Windows, and Linux.  &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;GLM-5.1:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;
An AI model from Chinese company &lt;a href="https://z.ai/" rel="noopener noreferrer"&gt;Z.AI&lt;/a&gt; (formerly Zhipu AI). Released on April 7, 2026, it's one of the best open-source models in the world. On the SWE-Bench Pro benchmark (a coding test), it scored 58.4 points, more than GPT-5.4 and Claude Opus 4.6. And it's completely free under the MIT license.  &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;OpenClaw:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;
An AI agent that transforms a regular language model into a full-featured assistant. It can send messages via WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Discord, search the web, work with files, write code, and automate tasks. OpenClaw launches through Ollama with a single command.&lt;/p&gt;


&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  System Requirements
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Before installing, make sure your computer meets these requirements:  &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Minimum (for cloud models via Ollama Cloud):&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Any modern computer
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;8 GB RAM
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;5 GB free disk space
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Internet connection
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Node.js version 22 or newer
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Recommended (for local models):&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;16 GB RAM (for medium-sized models)
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;GPU with 8+ GB VRAM (NVIDIA recommended)
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;20+ GB free disk space
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Running the full GLM-5.1 locally requires server hardware (the model has 744 billion parameters), but the cloud version via Ollama is free
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Important:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;
If you don't have a powerful GPU, don't worry! GLM-5.1 is available as a cloud model through Ollama (&lt;code&gt;glm-5.1:cloud&lt;/code&gt;), and it runs fast without any hardware requirements on your end.&lt;/p&gt;


&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  1. Install Ollama
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="https://ollama.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer"&gt;https://ollama.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Ollama is the foundation of the entire system. We start here.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;
Install Ollama by following the link to the official website. Paste the command into the terminal or download the app.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2F4xn9i1qd6c8z7kvew1v4.png" class="article-body-image-wrapper"&gt;&lt;img src="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2F4xn9i1qd6c8z7kvew1v4.png" alt="Image des   cription" width="800" height="371"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Now Ollama is installed.&lt;/p&gt;


&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  2. Choosing GLM 5.1 model
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Just type &lt;code&gt;ollama&lt;/code&gt; and the program will launch, then select the option &lt;strong&gt;“Chat with a model”&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2Fczhbtd6nc9osg5aazkz1.png" class="article-body-image-wrapper"&gt;&lt;img src="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2Fczhbtd6nc9osg5aazkz1.png" alt="age description" width="800" height="498"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Next, select the desired model, in my case &lt;strong&gt;GLM 5.1&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;
You'll be able to chat with it right in the terminal, ask questions, request code, analyze texts, and more.  &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Important:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;
To use cloud models, you need to sign in to an Ollama account. If you don't have one yet, Ollama will prompt you to create one when you first launch a cloud model. It's free.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2F8ru0t9fatlc9ujm0jl6f.png" class="article-body-image-wrapper"&gt;&lt;img src="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2F8ru0t9fatlc9ujm0jl6f.png" alt="Imag  e description" width="800" height="344"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Now we are connected via the cloud version of GLM 5.1.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2F73k3m7912bx65zm20gn7.png" class="article-body-image-wrapper"&gt;&lt;img src="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2F73k3m7912bx65zm20gn7.png" alt="Image " width="800" height="145"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;


&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  3. OpenClaw
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="https://ollama.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer"&gt;https://ollama.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Next, going down a little further on the same site, we will install OpenClaw using the command (if it is not already installed):&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2Fl0qa9lt1u30sxbkd82yr.png" class="article-body-image-wrapper"&gt;&lt;img src="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2Fl0qa9lt1u30sxbkd82yr.png" alt="Im scription" width="800" height="371"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Ollama will check if OpenClaw is installed on your computer
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;If not, it will download and install it via &lt;code&gt;npm&lt;/code&gt; (Node.js must be installed)
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;A security notice will appear (OpenClaw is getting access to tools on your computer) – accept it
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;A model selection screen will open, choose the one you need (for example, &lt;code&gt;glm-5.1:cloud&lt;/code&gt;)
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;OpenClaw will launch in the terminal, and you can start chatting
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Launch with configuration before starting:&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;
If you want to configure OpenClaw first (choose a model, connect messengers, etc.):&lt;br&gt;
&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight js-code-highlight"&gt;
&lt;pre class="highlight shell"&gt;&lt;code&gt;ollama launch openclaw &lt;span class="nt"&gt;--config&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;/div&gt;






&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  4. OpenClaw Control Panel (Control UI)
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;After launching OpenClaw, you can open the web control panel in your browser. Go to:&lt;br&gt;
&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight js-code-highlight"&gt;
&lt;pre class="highlight plaintext"&gt;&lt;code&gt;http://localhost:3000
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;/div&gt;



&lt;p&gt;In the Control UI you'll find:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Chat – chat with the AI assistant right in the browser
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Overview – general information about the agent's status
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Channels – connect messengers (WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Discord, iMessage)
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Instances – manage running instances
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Sessions – session and conversation history
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Usage – usage statistics
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Cron Jobs – automated scheduled tasks
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;At the top of the panel, you can switch between channels and models.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  5. Connecting automatic web search
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="https://docs.ollama.com/integrations/openclaw#web-search-and-fetch" rel="noopener noreferrer"&gt;https://docs.ollama.com/integrations/openclaw#web-search-and-fetch&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Next, we follow the documentation and enable automatic web search.  &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2Fhw5r7keqs7samr4vnza1.png" class="article-body-image-wrapper"&gt;&lt;img src="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2Fhw5r7keqs7samr4vnza1.png" alt="Ima iption" width="800" height="515"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;OpenClaw can search for information on the internet. If you're using a cloud model through Ollama, web search is enabled automatically.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;
For local models, you need to install the plugin:&lt;br&gt;
&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight js-code-highlight"&gt;
&lt;pre class="highlight shell"&gt;&lt;code&gt;openclaw plugins &lt;span class="nb"&gt;install&lt;/span&gt; @ollama/openclaw-web-search
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;/div&gt;






&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  6. Connecting the messaging platform
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="https://docs.ollama.com/integrations/openclaw#connect-messaging-apps" rel="noopener noreferrer"&gt;https://docs.ollama.com/integrations/openclaw#connect-messaging-apps&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Now you can connect messengers that will make it easier to communicate with your agent.  &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2F3ksx734lz5kudb2tdflq.png" class="article-body-image-wrapper"&gt;&lt;img src="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2F3ksx734lz5kudb2tdflq.png" alt="Imag iption" width="800" height="448"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;One of OpenClaw's key features is the ability to chat with the AI agent through familiar messengers. You send a message on Telegram and get a response from AI.  &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Channel setup is done through the Control Panel (Control UI) or via the command:&lt;br&gt;
&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight js-code-highlight"&gt;
&lt;pre class="highlight shell"&gt;&lt;code&gt;ollama launch openclaw &lt;span class="nt"&gt;--config&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;/div&gt;



&lt;p&gt;Select the &lt;strong&gt;“Channels”&lt;/strong&gt; section and follow the instructions to connect the messenger you need.  &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Link WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Discord, or iMessage with this command:&lt;br&gt;
&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight js-code-highlight"&gt;
&lt;pre class="highlight shell"&gt;&lt;code&gt;openclaw configure &lt;span class="nt"&gt;--section&lt;/span&gt; channels
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;/div&gt;



&lt;p&gt;For example, to connect a Telegram account, you will need to:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Go to the Telegram bot &lt;strong&gt;“BotFather”&lt;/strong&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Start it
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Create a new bot by giving it a name and a username
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Once the bot is successfully created, grab its token
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2F92oknxnotxf46cnwwlua.png" class="article-body-image-wrapper"&gt;&lt;img src="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2F92oknxnotxf46cnwwlua.png" alt="Image  on" width="800" height="1024"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Next we add our bot token in the terminal, and we're all set.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  7. Using with Claude Code and Codex (Bonus)
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Ollama also lets you launch other AI development tools. As shown on the GLM-5.1 page on Ollama, there are ready-made commands:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claude Code with GLM-5.1:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight js-code-highlight"&gt;
&lt;pre class="highlight shell"&gt;&lt;code&gt;ollama launch claude &lt;span class="nt"&gt;--model&lt;/span&gt; glm-5.1:cloud
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;/div&gt;



&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Codex with GLM-5.1:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight js-code-highlight"&gt;
&lt;pre class="highlight shell"&gt;&lt;code&gt;ollama launch codex &lt;span class="nt"&gt;--model&lt;/span&gt; glm-5.1:cloud
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;/div&gt;



&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;OpenCode with GLM-5.1:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="highlight js-code-highlight"&gt;
&lt;pre class="highlight shell"&gt;&lt;code&gt;ollama launch opencode &lt;span class="nt"&gt;--model&lt;/span&gt; glm-5.1:cloud
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;/div&gt;



&lt;p&gt;This lets you harness the power of GLM-5.1 through different programming interfaces.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  About the GLM-5.1 Model: Why It Matters
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;GLM-5.1 is a next-generation model from &lt;a href="https://z.ai/" rel="noopener noreferrer"&gt;Z.AI&lt;/a&gt; (formerly Zhipu AI, a Tsinghua University spinoff). Key facts:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Architecture: 744 billion parameters (Mixture-of-Experts), 40 billion active parameters per token
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Context window: 200,000 tokens
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;License: MIT (completely free, use however you want)
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Release date: April 7, 2026
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2Fagvhe51dziqmkq9ra3tv.png" class="article-body-image-wrapper"&gt;&lt;img src="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2Fagvhe51dziqmkq9ra3tv.png" alt="I escription" width="800" height="592"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;GLM-5.1's key feature is its ability to work autonomously for up to 8 hours, revising its strategy and finding new approaches to problem-solving.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;
While other models “run out of steam” after their initial attempts, GLM-5.1 continues improving results through hundreds of iterations.  &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Three commands. Zero subscriptions. Your own AI agent that works for you, not someone else's server. The future is here and it's free.  &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;🔖 Bookmark this – you'll need it again.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;
🔔 Follow my profile, so you catch guides like this first.&lt;/p&gt;

</description>
      <category>devchallenge</category>
      <category>openclawchallenge</category>
      <category>ai</category>
      <category>tutorial</category>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>TerraLens: See Your Planet. Shape Its Future. 🌍</title>
      <dc:creator>ANIRUDDHA  ADAK</dc:creator>
      <pubDate>Fri, 17 Apr 2026 05:45:04 +0000</pubDate>
      <link>https://dumb.dev.to/aniruddhaadak/terralens-see-your-planet-shape-its-future-18hc</link>
      <guid>https://dumb.dev.to/aniruddhaadak/terralens-see-your-planet-shape-its-future-18hc</guid>
      <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This is a submission for the &lt;a href="https://dev.to/challenges/weekend-2026-04-16"&gt;Weekend Challenge: Earth Day Edition&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  🌍 What I Built
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TerraLens&lt;/strong&gt; is an interactive, visually stunning 3D Earth visualization combined with an AI-powered environmental storytelling experience. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;For Earth Day, I wanted to build something that doesn't just show sterile data on a static dashboard, but actually &lt;em&gt;connects&lt;/em&gt; people emotionally to the challenges our planet faces. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;With TerraLens, you can rotate and explore the globe to discover environmental hotspots (from the Amazon rainforest to the Great Barrier Reef) across four critical dimensions: &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ol&gt;
&lt;li&gt;💨 &lt;strong&gt;CO₂ Emissions&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;🌳 &lt;strong&gt;Forest Loss&lt;/strong&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;🌊 &lt;strong&gt;Ocean Health&lt;/strong&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;🦋 &lt;strong&gt;Biodiversity&lt;/strong&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ol&gt;

&lt;p&gt;When you click on a region's glowing marker, you don't just get a simple pop-up. Instead, &lt;strong&gt;Google's Gemini 2.0 Flash&lt;/strong&gt; steps in as your &lt;em&gt;"Earth Advisor"&lt;/em&gt; — dynamically explaining the local environmental dynamics, the specific challenges that region faces, and what positive actions are being taken right now. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;"My intended goal was to make environmental awareness immersive, beautiful, and fundamentally optimistic — empowering users to understand our planet and generate their own personalized 'Earth Day Pledges'."&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;




&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  📸 Features &amp;amp; Demo
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I've deployed the project live! You can personally experience the 3D interaction here:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;🚀 &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href="https://aniruddhaadak80.github.io/terralens-earth-day/" rel="noopener noreferrer"&gt;Experience TerraLens Live&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;
  
  
  The 3D Environmental Globe
&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The interactive globe allows you to rotate Earth and cycle through different high-importance data layers like CO₂ emissions, the state of the Oceans, and Biodiversity hotspots.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2F0jmbultayzijero5ptqg.png" class="article-body-image-wrapper"&gt;&lt;img src="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2F0jmbultayzijero5ptqg.png" alt="TerraLens Default Globe View" width="800" height="396"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;br&gt;
&lt;em&gt;(A high-level view showing the dark, space-glass UI and the emissions layer)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2F1fvs0bqsj8iwkj2k4c4u.png" class="article-body-image-wrapper"&gt;&lt;img src="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2F1fvs0bqsj8iwkj2k4c4u.png" alt="TerraLens Oceans Layer" width="800" height="510"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;em&gt;(Switching to the Oceans layer. Notice the animated KPI dashboard at the bottom updating in real-time!)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;
  
  
  The "Earth Advisor" AI Chat
&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;By clicking &lt;strong&gt;"Ask Gemini"&lt;/strong&gt;, you unlock an interactive environmental storytelling interface. If you click on specific continent hotspots, the spatial mapping feeds that location's data right into Gemini!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2Fnwddrrrsct30gmd7h4ng.png" class="article-body-image-wrapper"&gt;&lt;img src="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2Fnwddrrrsct30gmd7h4ng.png" alt="Gemini Chat Interface" width="800" height="510"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;em&gt;(The Gemini sidebar. It generates contextually-aware responses based exactly on what you're interacting with.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;
  
  
  Generate Your Own Earth Pledge
&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To promote real-world change beyond just looking at a screen, I programmed Gemini to construct highly personalized, realistically actionable &lt;strong&gt;Earth Pledges&lt;/strong&gt; dynamically.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2Fjx4ctpe78rnpzqga2nfs.png" class="article-body-image-wrapper"&gt;&lt;img src="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2Fjx4ctpe78rnpzqga2nfs.png" alt="Earth Pledge Generator" width="800" height="510"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;em&gt;(A personalized, AI-generated pledge modal generated live using the &lt;code&gt;@google/generative-ai&lt;/code&gt; SDK!)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;💡 Pro Tip:&lt;/strong&gt; Try deploying it locally and asking the Gemini chat panel to &lt;em&gt;"Generate a personalized Earth Day Pledge"&lt;/em&gt; for you!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;


&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  💻 Code
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;You can check out the full source code on my GitHub:&lt;/p&gt;


&lt;div class="ltag-github-readme-tag"&gt;
  &lt;div class="readme-overview"&gt;
    &lt;h2&gt;
      &lt;img src="https://assets.dev.to/assets/github-logo-5a155e1f9a670af7944dd5e12375bc76ed542ea80224905ecaf878b9157cdefc.svg" alt="GitHub logo"&gt;
      &lt;a href="https://github.com/aniruddhaadak80" rel="noopener noreferrer"&gt;
        aniruddhaadak80
      &lt;/a&gt; / &lt;a href="https://github.com/aniruddhaadak80/terralens-earth-day" rel="noopener noreferrer"&gt;
        terralens-earth-day
      &lt;/a&gt;
    &lt;/h2&gt;
    &lt;h3&gt;
      
    &lt;/h3&gt;
  &lt;/div&gt;
  &lt;div class="ltag-github-body"&gt;
    
&lt;div id="readme" class="md"&gt;
&lt;div class="markdown-heading"&gt;
&lt;h1 class="heading-element"&gt;🌍 TerraLens — See Your Planet. Shape Its Future.&lt;/h1&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p&gt;An interactive 3D Earth visualization with AI-powered environmental storytelling, built for &lt;strong&gt;Earth Day 2026&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Explore our planet through an immersive 3D globe showing real environmental data — CO₂ emissions, deforestation hotspots, ocean temperature anomalies, and biodiversity loss. Click on any region and let &lt;strong&gt;Google Gemini AI&lt;/strong&gt; explain the environmental situation and suggest actionable steps.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;div class="markdown-heading"&gt;
&lt;h2 class="heading-element"&gt;✨ Features&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Interactive 3D Globe&lt;/strong&gt; — Rotate, zoom, and explore Earth with realistic rendering using Three.js&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Environmental Data Layers&lt;/strong&gt; — Toggle between CO₂ emissions, deforestation, ocean health, and biodiversity&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;AI Environmental Advisor&lt;/strong&gt; — Powered by Google Gemini, get personalized insights about any region&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Real-Time Stats Dashboard&lt;/strong&gt; — Animated environmental statistics from public datasets&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Earth Day Pledges&lt;/strong&gt; — Generate personalized sustainability commitments&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Responsive Design&lt;/strong&gt; — Works beautifully on desktop and mobile&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;div class="markdown-heading"&gt;
&lt;h2 class="heading-element"&gt;🛠️ Tech Stack&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div class="table-wrapper-paragraph"&gt;&lt;table&gt;
&lt;thead&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;th&gt;Technology&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;th&gt;Purpose&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;/thead&gt;
&lt;tbody&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href="https://threejs.org/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"&gt;Three.js&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;3D globe rendering with custom shaders&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href="https://ai.google.dev/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"&gt;Google Gemini API&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;AI-powered&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;/tbody&gt;
&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/div&gt;…&lt;/div&gt;
  &lt;/div&gt;
  &lt;div class="gh-btn-container"&gt;&lt;a class="gh-btn" href="https://github.com/aniruddhaadak80/terralens-earth-day" rel="noopener noreferrer"&gt;View on GitHub&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;





&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  🛠️ How I Built It
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;TerraLens is a completely frontend-driven application built for speed and immersion. Here is the technical breakdown:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;The Core Environment:&lt;/strong&gt; I used &lt;code&gt;Vite&lt;/code&gt; + vanilla &lt;code&gt;JavaScript&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;CSS&lt;/code&gt; to keep the bundle as light and blazing-fast as possible.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;The 3D Globe:&lt;/strong&gt; I used &lt;code&gt;Three.js&lt;/code&gt; directly to map out custom procedural earth textures, atmosphere shaders, glowing hotspot markers, and the dynamic starfield. Creating a realistic day/night cycle and atmospheric glow required some very careful tweaking of the &lt;code&gt;ShaderMaterial&lt;/code&gt;!&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;The UI Experience:&lt;/strong&gt; Beautiful, smooth "glassmorphism" panels implemented purely with vanilla CSS variables and &lt;code&gt;backdrop-filter&lt;/code&gt; to give it a premium, futuristic look.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;The Data:&lt;/strong&gt; I manually compiled real datasets from public sources like the &lt;em&gt;Global Forest Watch&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;NASA&lt;/em&gt;, and the &lt;em&gt;IUCN Red List&lt;/em&gt;. This is structured as a static JSON for zero-latency lookups on the frontend.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;
  
  
  🧠 The Hardest Part
&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The biggest technical challenge was &lt;strong&gt;seamlessly connecting the spatial UI (the 3D globe) with the conversational UI.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Clicking a hotspot creates a direct handoff to the Gemini chat panel. To make this work, the app dynamically injects the selected region's environmental data into a hidden system prompt to guide the AI's response format before presenting it to the user.&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  🏆 Prize Categories
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I am proudly submitting this project to the following prize category:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Best Use of Google Gemini ✨&lt;/strong&gt;: To bring the data to life, I deeply integrated the &lt;code&gt;@google/generative-ai&lt;/code&gt; SDK. I used a highly tuned system prompt that instructs Gemini to be an encouraging, optimistic &lt;em&gt;"Earth Advisor"&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It receives hidden context about the specific region the user clicks on, formatting the structural JSON data into engaging, human-readable narratives. Crucially, it also has the programmatic capability to generate actionable, localized Earth Day pledges for users based on their chat inputs. &lt;strong&gt;It turns TerraLens from a passive encyclopedia into an active conversation!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;




&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Thank you for checking out TerraLens, and Happy Earth Day! Let's shape a better future together. 🌍💚&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

</description>
      <category>devchallenge</category>
      <category>weekendchallenge</category>
      <category>earthday</category>
      <category>gemini</category>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>My OpenClaw Journey: 30 Hands-On Experiences That Built My Wealth of Knowledge (Kolkata AI Agent Engineer Edition)</title>
      <dc:creator>ANIRUDDHA  ADAK</dc:creator>
      <pubDate>Fri, 17 Apr 2026 04:11:33 +0000</pubDate>
      <link>https://dumb.dev.to/aniruddhaadak/my-openclaw-journey-30-hands-on-experiences-that-built-my-wealth-of-knowledge-kolkata-ai-agent-2hd1</link>
      <guid>https://dumb.dev.to/aniruddhaadak/my-openclaw-journey-30-hands-on-experiences-that-built-my-wealth-of-knowledge-kolkata-ai-agent-2hd1</guid>
      <description>&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This is a submission for the &lt;a href="https://dev.to/challenges/openclaw-2026-04-16"&gt;OpenClaw Challenge&lt;/a&gt; in the &lt;code&gt;Wealth of Knowledge&lt;/code&gt; track.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Hey DEV Community 🙋‍♂️&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I’m &lt;strong&gt;ANIRUDDHA ADAK&lt;/strong&gt; (@aniruddhadak on X), a final-year B.Tech Computer Science student at Budge Budge Institute of Technology (BBIT) in Kolkata, and a full-time AI Agent Engineer at heart. I spend my days (and nights) building autonomous agents, experimenting with the latest LLMs, and sharing what actually works on my DEV.to and X.  &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;OpenClaw hit different for me. While everyone was hyped about AI chatbots, I wanted something that &lt;em&gt;executes&lt;/em&gt;. So I went all-in — scoured every Reddit thread, X post, DEV.to article, and GitHub repo about OpenClaw, then turned those stories into my daily reality on a spare Ubuntu laptop running Docker + Claude 3.5 Sonnet + local models.  &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This isn’t a tutorial. This is my raw, first-person journey of how OpenClaw became my 24/7 lobster-powered executive assistant. It chats with me on WhatsApp and Telegram, remembers everything, runs heartbeats, and actually gets shit done. Here’s the &lt;strong&gt;wealth of knowledge&lt;/strong&gt; I’ve gained — 30 real experiences that leveled up my coding, learning, and life as a Kolkata-based AI builder.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;
  
  
  Quick Setup Story (My Kolkata Reality)
&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;30 minutes. That’s all it took. Node.js 22, Docker Compose, WhatsApp OAuth, and I was live — fully local, no VPS, no cloud nonsense. Connected it to my personal WhatsApp and family Telegram group. Persistent memory + Obsidian vault + cron heartbeats? Perfect for my chaotic IST schedule and engineering life.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(My real dusty Kolkata setup powering OpenClaw 24/7 — full local ownership)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;
  
  
  The Top 30 Experiences (Synthesized from the Entire Internet + My Daily Tests)
&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Every single one pulled from real community wins and battle-tested by me while building my own AI agents.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;
  
  
  Daily Life Automation (1-10)
&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;ol&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Morning Briefings&lt;/strong&gt; — 7 AM IST WhatsApp digest: Kolkata weather, my calendar, top tasks, news, and health stats. Replaced five different apps overnight.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Email Zero Inbox&lt;/strong&gt; — Cleared 847 emails and unsubscribed from 203 newsletters with scary accuracy. Drafts replies in my exact tone.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Calendar Mastery&lt;/strong&gt; — OAuth scheduling, conflict detection, autonomous flight check-ins.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;File Chaos to Order&lt;/strong&gt; — Smart renaming and organizing 300+ dev screenshots and files.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Web Research Beast&lt;/strong&gt; — Browses 15+ sites and structures competitor analyses for my agent projects.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Recurring Heartbeats&lt;/strong&gt; — Every 4 hours: inbox recap + Indian stocks/crypto portfolio check.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;LinkedIn Enrichment&lt;/strong&gt; — Finds founders talking AI agents and suggests personalized connection intros.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Reddit Trend Watcher&lt;/strong&gt; — Flags rising topics in r/LocalLLaMA and r/devto for my next builds.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Family History Archivist&lt;/strong&gt; — Documents stories in our Telegram group and builds a living knowledge base.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Health &amp;amp; Diet Coach&lt;/strong&gt; — Tracks calories and workouts via chat without any extra apps.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ol&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Real WhatsApp vibe: "Morning brief ready, Aniruddha! ☀️ Kolkata weather + your top 3 tasks")&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;
  
  
  Dev &amp;amp; Productivity Superpowers (11-20)
&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;ol&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Repo Maintenance Bot&lt;/strong&gt; — Monitors my GitHub (@aniruddhaadak80 / &lt;a class="mentioned-user" href="https://dev.to/aniruddhaadak"&gt;@aniruddhaadak&lt;/a&gt;), prioritizes issues, updates docs while I sleep.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Daily AI News Digest&lt;/strong&gt; — Curated and delivered via Telegram, perfectly filtered for my agent engineering focus.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Code Review Assistant&lt;/strong&gt; — Spots obvious bugs (human verification always on).&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Meeting Prep VA&lt;/strong&gt; — Pulls context from emails, Slack, and notes before calls.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Content Generator&lt;/strong&gt; — Drafts DEV.to blogs or LinkedIn posts pulling from my Notion/Airtable.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Custom Skill Builder&lt;/strong&gt; — Vibe-coded a new skill in chat; it packaged and deployed it itself.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Local Model Experimenter&lt;/strong&gt; — Switches seamlessly between Claude, GPT, and Qwen on my hardware.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Cost Guardian&lt;/strong&gt; — Tracks API spend and sets hard limits (saved me real money).&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Sub-Agent Spawner&lt;/strong&gt; — Breaks complex tasks into parallel agents.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Obsidian Memory Vault&lt;/strong&gt; — Long-term context stored in version-controlled notes I can edit anytime.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ol&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;
  
  
  Advanced &amp;amp; Fun Wins (21-30)
&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;ol&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;To-Do &amp;amp; Reminder Overlord&lt;/strong&gt; — Proactive pings for bills, birthdays, events.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Portfolio Crypto Robot&lt;/strong&gt; — Monitors + simple trades (small wallet only — learned caution fast).&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Networking EA&lt;/strong&gt; — Drafts human-feeling “executive assistant” emails.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Booking &amp;amp; Reservations&lt;/strong&gt; — Handles flights and dinners via tools.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Inbox &amp;amp; Slack Cleaner&lt;/strong&gt; — Archives 80% automatically.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Personal Learning Coach&lt;/strong&gt; — Turns my DEV.to reading list into daily actionable insights.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Security-First Sandbox&lt;/strong&gt; — Everything isolated and reviewed.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Real-Time Chat Responses&lt;/strong&gt; — Replies in groups with full memory context.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Workflow Glue&lt;/strong&gt; — Connects Gmail, Slack, calendar, browser — feels like a real VA.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Life Leverage Multiplier&lt;/strong&gt; — Freed 10+ hours/week so I can focus on building agents instead of admin work.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ol&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Watch the lobster magic: Email → Calendar → Heartbeat automation flowing live 🦞)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;
  
  
  What I Learned (My Wealth of Knowledge as an AI Agent Engineer)
&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;OpenClaw showed me what personal AI &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; feel like: persistent memory, heartbeats, chat-first UX, and actual execution. It’s not just another chatbot — it’s a force multiplier.  &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Yes, token costs need watching and outputs always need verification, but the privacy and ownership of running everything locally on my own machine? That’s pure empowerment for a Kolkata dev like me building autonomous agents.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;OpenClaw isn’t perfect yet (still early, some vibe-coding quirks), but the community stories + my own tests convinced me this is the real deal.  &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you’re on the fence, set it up today. Start small — one WhatsApp connection and a morning brief. You’ll thank yourself.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Exfoliate! Exfoliate! 🦞&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;What’s your #1 OpenClaw experience so far? Drop it in the comments — my own OpenClaw instance is reading every single one.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This entire post was 100% powered by my OpenClaw instance.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;— &lt;strong&gt;ANIRUDDHA ADAK&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;
Kolkata, West Bengal, India | April 17, 2026&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;em&gt;(X: &lt;a href="https://x.com/aniruddhadak" rel="noopener noreferrer"&gt;@aniruddhadak&lt;/a&gt; — I test and share the latest AI agents and LLMs daily. Come say hi!)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

</description>
      <category>devchallenge</category>
      <category>openclawchallenge</category>
      <category>ai</category>
      <category>automation</category>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>The Hyper-Intelligent 418 Teapot: Wasting AI Compute on Tea</title>
      <dc:creator>ANIRUDDHA  ADAK</dc:creator>
      <pubDate>Sun, 12 Apr 2026 04:04:44 +0000</pubDate>
      <link>https://dumb.dev.to/aniruddhaadak/the-hyper-intelligent-418-teapot-wasting-ai-compute-on-tea-11ol</link>
      <guid>https://dumb.dev.to/aniruddhaadak/the-hyper-intelligent-418-teapot-wasting-ai-compute-on-tea-11ol</guid>
      <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This is a submission for the &lt;a href="https://dev.to/challenges/aprilfools-2026"&gt;DEV April Fools Challenge&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  What I Built
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I built &lt;strong&gt;The Hyper-Intelligent 418 Teapot&lt;/strong&gt;. In a world where AI is curing diseases, writing complex algorithms, and optimizing logistics, I decided to use it for its truest purpose: aggressively refusing to brew coffee. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Driven by the legendary Larry Masinter's HTCPCP (Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol), this app is literally designed to do absolutely nothing useful. You click "Brew Coffee," and the AI generates a myriad of completely over-engineered excuses explaining why it's a teapot, throwing an HTTP 418 error directly to your face.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  Anti-Value Proposition
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This app produces exactly zero milligrams of caffeine. It decreases systemic productivity by arguing with the user, wastes precious processing power to simulate a porcelain vessel, and solves a problem that no one has ever had (accidentally asking a website for coffee). It embodies pure, unadulterated anti-value.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  Best Google AI Usage
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I integrated the essence of Google's AI capabilities not to summarize your codebase or write emails, but to generate the most contextually aware, heavily-parameterized HTTP 418 errors known to humankind. The prompt engineering exclusively focused on maximizing the AI's indignation at being mistaken for a coffee maker.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  Best Ode to Larry Masinter
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Larry Masinter envisioned a future where protocols were robust. HTCPCP (RFC 2324) was his gift to the world, and error 418 ("I am a teapot") is its crown jewel. This project exists to ensure that his legacy lives on in the age of Artificial Intelligence.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Happy April Fools! 🫖☕🚫&lt;/p&gt;

</description>
      <category>devchallenge</category>
      <category>418challenge</category>
      <category>showdev</category>
      <category>ai</category>
    </item>
  </channel>
</rss>
