Author Allen Taylor

Looking for fellow independent creators living at the edge of emerging technologies, imagination, and faith.

[Author Allen Taylor @Allen_Taylor]

@s13k_ That's awesome

[Author Allen Taylor @Allen_Taylor]

I asked Claude Fable 5 to give me a developmental edit of my novel in progress. This is the first page. The redacted phrase kills a spoiler alert. Otherwise, gawk at my deficiencies.

[Author Allen Taylor @Allen_Taylor]

Drats!

I was almost done writing a post when Substack crashed. I hope I still have the draft when it gets fixed.

[Author Allen Taylor @Allen_Taylor]

Even AI knows you should read books, but here's what Fable didn't tell you ...

It's fine to ask the LLM to summarize a book. But once you get the summary, use it to decide whether you should read the entire book. If the summary provides value, just think how much more reading the book will prove valuable. LLM summaries are a good way to decide what books to read.

[Alex & Books 📚 @AlexAndBooks_]

I asked Fable 5 why people should still read books in the age of AI.

Here's what it said:

[Author Allen Taylor @Allen_Taylor]

@kplikethebird @every I love the line about AI creating more work but helping you understand it better. I've had the same experience.

[Author Allen Taylor @Allen_Taylor]

I just ran my novel-in-progress (about 80k words and nowhere near complete) past Claude Fable 5 as a developmental edit. I'm impressed.

Note: I've done this twice before. Once with ChatGPT and once with Claude pre-Fable 5 release. This dev edit far surpassed either of those.

15 pages. Almost 10,000 words. Recommends many fixes I myself have struggled with, wondering how I'm going to fix these issues. Claude Fable 5 has given me several incredible ideas for doing so. This will certainly make the work easier going forward. I actually have a plan and a roadmap for completion.

[Author Allen Taylor @Allen_Taylor]

100%

This is one of the reasons I left academia and never pursued graduate-level studies. Much of the writing is meant to obscure, which is the exact opposite of the purpose of writing.

[David Perell Clips @PerellClips]

Academics write for each other, not for people.

Steven Pinker has spent over four decades doing the opposite, and thinks current academic writing is "enormous wasted effort."

"There's an awful lot of brilliant work, really smart people in academia. Why are they doing it? Just to entertain each other? Taxpayers pay for it. It should be accessible. Why should I have to read a paragraph five or six times?

It gets under my skin when academics devote so much brainpower into the scholarship and then just blow off the essential task of letting the world know what you've done."

[Author Allen Taylor @Allen_Taylor]

Fiction writers can use Claude for 3D world building.

Build your world, have Claude Fable bring it to life, including your characters, and invite your readers to experience it first hand.

[Min Choi @minchoi]

Claude Fable 5 just changed the AI game.

People are one-shotting games, 3D worlds, app builders and insane code optimizations. There's a major shift.

10 examples:

[Author Allen Taylor @Allen_Taylor]

@Writers_Write Poems also allow you to play with white space in ways that prose can't. Poems include line breaks, but you can also experiment with indents and visual expressions on the page. This fosters greater creativity, even for writing prose.

[Author Allen Taylor @Allen_Taylor]

@mikefutia TRENDS

[Author Allen Taylor @Allen_Taylor]

Start with generation. Master that, then move on to RAG. Only after you master RAG should you attempt to master agents.

[Krishna Agrawal @Krishnasagrawal]

Most companies don't need AI Agents.

They need better RAG.

That's the uncomfortable truth.

Right now, everyone wants to build autonomous AI systems that can reason, plan, use tools, and complete tasks independently.

But many teams haven't even solved the retrieval problem yet.

Here's the difference:

📚 RAG answers questions.

🤖 AI Agents complete objectives.

RAG is like hiring the world's fastest researcher.

Ask a question.

It finds the right documents, retrieves relevant information, and generates an answer.

Simple.

Reliable.

Cost-effective.

AI Agents are different.

They don't stop at answers.

They decide what to do next.

They break goals into tasks.

They call APIs.

They write code.

They use tools.

They evaluate results.

And they keep working until the objective is complete.

That's why an Agent is exponentially more powerful...

And exponentially harder to build.

The biggest mistake I see:

Companies trying to deploy AI Agents when what they actually need is a solid RAG system connected to their knowledge base.

Because if an agent can't retrieve the right information...

It will simply make faster mistakes.

The AI stack is evolving:

LLM → Generates

RAG → Retrieves

Agent → Acts

The future isn't RAG vs Agents.

The future is Agents powered by great retrieval.

Because intelligence without context is guessing.

And autonomy without context is dangerous.

Question:

Are you building RAG systems, AI Agents, or both? 👇

#AI #GenAI #RAG #AIAgents #LLM #ArtificialIntelligence #MachineLearning #Automation #AgenticAI #Tech

[Author Allen Taylor @Allen_Taylor]

Great testimony

[Byron Donalds @ByronDonalds]

To you, it's just a Cracker Barrel parking lot. To me, it's where I gave my life to Jesus Christ.

I was 21 years old. I was working at the Cracker Barrel in Tallahassee after some of the worst years of my life. I'd made mistakes. Real ones.

I grew up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, raised by a mom who worked hard and didn't accept excuses. But I made decisions that should have ended my story before it ever really started. By the grace of God, they didn't. But every day, I was carrying them.

One afternoon, a church group came into the restaurant, just back from a revival. I served them their meals like I served any other table. But something happened while I was serving them. I can't fully explain it to you. The Lord spoke to me. He said, “Stop running from Me.”

It knocked me back.

I went to find the table, and they were all gone. I could see through their windows that they were getting on their bus, and I knew deep down that if I let them drive away, I was going to keep running. So I went outside. The last woman, just as she was stepping onto the bus, turned to me and asked, “Are you okay?”

I told her, “No ma’am, I’m not okay.” I told her the Lord was telling me to stop running.

That whole bus emptied out, stood with me in the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel in Tallahassee, Florida, and prayed over me right there.

I gave my life to Christ that day. Right there.

I still get emotional about it. Because I know what I was before that moment, and I know what He's done since. He gave me a wife who shares my faith. He gave me three sons. He gave me a career, a community, a calling I never would have dared to ask for. He took a kid from Crown Heights who’d run out of chances and gave him a life that doesn't make sense apart from grace.

People ask me sometimes why I talk about it. Why I bring up the parking lot. Why I don't just keep that part private and let folks see the polished version.

I'll tell you why.

Because there's a young man out there right now — maybe in Tallahassee, maybe in Tampa, maybe in Miami, maybe in a small town in the Panhandle — who thinks his story is already over. Who thinks the mistakes he's made disqualify him from the life he could have had. Who thinks God doesn't want anything to do with somebody like him.

I'm here to tell him: that's a lie.

In life, you're not who you are at the lowest point. You're who you choose to become after.

The Lord met me in a Cracker Barrel parking lot. He'll meet you wherever you are.

You just have to stop running.

[Author Allen Taylor @Allen_Taylor]

Looks like I'm not the only one who's noticed.

[Eric 🍥 @EricOnchain]

I've been in crypto for almost a decade and the lifecycle of 99% of crypto companies is predictable.

- Decentralized, until the VC round needs control.
- Permissionless, until the regulator calls.
- Non-custodial, until “UX” becomes the excuse.
- Privacy, until an advertiser or bank partner wants the data.

The justification is always adoption.

As an industry, we've compromised these values over and over in exchange for temporary adoption. We centralized that for adoption. We collected this because adoption needed it.

And somehow the adoption they promised never arrives in the shape they sold.

[Author Allen Taylor @Allen_Taylor]

@Zephyr_hg AUTOPILOT

[Author Allen Taylor @Allen_Taylor]

@codeby_abir If I wanted to improve my resume, I'd ask ChatGPT to interview me and then create a resume and cover letter for a specific job at a specific company.

[Author Allen Taylor @Allen_Taylor]

Worth considering

[Abir Hasan @codeby_abir]

6 PROMPTS TO LEARN ANYTHING USING CLAUDE

Most people use Claude like a search engine.

They ask a question, get an answer, and move on.

But the fastest learners use Claude differently.

They turn it into a personal tutor that breaks down complex topics, exposes knowledge gaps, and accelerates mastery.

Here are 6 Claude prompts that can help you learn almost anything faster 👇

[Author Allen Taylor @Allen_Taylor]

This is a great essay, but there is a fifth position: Foundationalism.

Foundationalism is a pragmatic addition that captures the structural mechanics of how the modern digital asset ecosystem actually functions. It shifts the focus from ideology to economic utility, framing Bitcoin as the indispensable global liquidity layer and systemic anchor for the rest of the market. Bitcoin's primary job is to absorb and hold vast amounts of capital to stabilize the broader space, and that's all it needs to do. It can do more, but it doesn't need to in order to be practical, valuable, and useful.

As a Foundationalist, I respect all four of Saylor's ideologies and appreciate the big players who maintain large wallets because without them the rest of us would be eating cheese. However, other blockchains and other cryptocurrencies can fill the gaps left open by Bitcoin's weaknesses.

Foundationalism recognizes three critical realities that traditional perspectives often overlook:

1. The "Economic Sovereign" Role in traditional finance. The US Dollar does not need to be the most technologically advanced or fastest currency to rule the global financial system. Its power comes purely from its unmatched liquidity, depth of capital, and the fact that all other assets are priced against it. The Foundationalist view positions Bitcoin as the digital equivalent. It doesn't need smart contracts or high-speed transactions; it just needs to be an unshakeable, highly capitalized vault.

2. A Buffer Against Systemic Cascades. A market without a strong anchor collapses entirely when panic strikes. In crypto, Bitcoin acts as the ultimate shock absorber. When capital is held firmly in Bitcoin by long-term institutional custodians and corporate treasuries, it creates a massive "liquidity sponge" that prevents localized altcoin failures from completely wiping out the entire industry's infrastructure.

3. The Enabler of Ecosystem Innovation. An anchor allows other ships to explore. By maintaining a massive, stable capital base in Bitcoin, developers, venture capitalists, and other users gain the economic confidence to build higher-risk, high-utility networks (like Ethereum, Solana, or decentralized finance applications) on top of or alongside it.

Foundationalism recognizes the values of Bitcoin and its defenders without worshiping the infrastructure. One can appreciate the beauty and architectural craftsmanship of the Eiffel Tower or the Empire State Building without expecting that all buildings or all structures follow their patterns or move out of the way so that those two can have supremacy. Foundationalism says, "Yes, let's keep Bitcoin, let's use Bitcoin, but let's not stop there."

[Michael Saylor @saylor]

https://t.co/yeG4PgpjEq

[Author Allen Taylor @Allen_Taylor]

@CoinMarketCap Let's add one more: Foundationalists.

[Author Allen Taylor @Allen_Taylor]

@TheycallmeDan_ @milan_milanovic When is the expected delivery?

[Author Allen Taylor @Allen_Taylor]

@KyleLeeWriter @charliekkendo Try The Band and Creedence Clearwater Revival, both classic blues-based rock, and folksy.