Mannendri Olivares

founding eng @ambral_ai (YC S25), prev ai @mit & intern @google + @amazon
let’s talk: startups, agentic ai, building
or: epic fantasy books, lifting, sports

[Zac Burton @zacburtonx]

@JensenHuang & @garrytan at YC Startup School;

“Controllability of agents will be the next breakthrough”

He’s referring to how a simple word change in an md file (for example) could significantly perturb agent actions.

Interesting area!

[Mannendri Olivares @mannendri]

@zacburtonx Free merch from the YCxMIT event on campus back in April 👀

[Mannendri Olivares @mannendri]

Am I larping hard enough?

[Brios Olivares @briosolivares]

We create systems like school to serve students. But since it’s difficult to measure learning directly, we use metrics like grades and test scores as a proxy. And the system begins to reward performance on the metrics, which leads students to organize their behavior around optimizing for those metrics, instead of learning itself.

Once those metrics no longer dictate what matters, it’s easier to ask what do you genuinely want to understand. What knowledge will help me in the things I’m doing in life

[Jensen Huang @JensenHuang]

For my first post, I’m sharing a letter @NVIDIA signed on why open models matter.

AI will transform every industry, power every company, and be built by every country.

Open models strengthen safety and cybersecurity, accelerate innovation and diffusion, and enable sovereignty.

The world needs both frontier closed models and frontier open models.

https://t.co/AUKzoQ5Ikb

[Mannendri Olivares @mannendri]

Why do I feel so much more empowered to learn new things AFTER leaving school…

[Mannendri Olivares @mannendri]

@dakshgup The bottleneck has shifted from writing code to validating it...wholeheartedly agree with this mission. Software should be self-healing

[Mannendri Olivares @mannendri]

Going to SF this weekend for @ycombinator 's startup school! Who/what should I look out for? 🤔

[Mannendri Olivares @mannendri]

Thank you @vercel for providing an agent skill for AI SDK version migration - saved me from a runtime regression that Claude did not catch initially. What are other cool use cases for agent skills?

[Mannendri Olivares @mannendri]

@spencermateega @AfterQuery @briosolivares is cracked

[Mannendri Olivares @mannendri]

@Plasma__AI Loop engineering --> tree engineering

[Mannendri Olivares @mannendri]

Is it better to agent-session-max on multiple tasks at once (at the cost of context-switching) or truly focus on one task at a time? 🤔

[Mannendri Olivares @mannendri]

When the AI finally does what you want it to do…

[Bill Gurley @bgurley]

Today in AI.

[Mannendri Olivares @mannendri]

One of the worst habits I’m continuously unlearning is procrastination. Early action pays dividends in the long term.

[Sahil Bloom @SahilBloom]

Underrated life advice: A good life is built by simply doing uncomfortable things sooner. The delayed conversation gets harder. The ignored problem gets bigger. The small repair gets more expensive. Peace is never found through avoidance. It’s found through direct early action.

[Mannendri Olivares @mannendri]

@briosolivares To decide or not to decide, that is the question

[Mannendri Olivares @mannendri]

@dakshgup Cool to see actual research on this - confirms a paradigm that feels like a prudent thing to do anyways

[Mannendri Olivares @mannendri]

@karpathy Next step is capturing your thoughts directly through a BCI

[Sahil Bloom @SahilBloom]

I'm convinced that real success is often quiet. It's spending less than you make. Driving the simple car. Wearing what you like. Loving the same person forever. Showing up for friends. Avoiding drama. Doing hard things. Real success doesn't shout. Quiet is seriously underrated.

[Mannendri Olivares @mannendri]

@AryoPatel @andera_ai @lightspeedvp @tinahhong The co-founder ties run deep

[Mannendri Olivares @mannendri]

@tinahhong Amazing stuff! And a great team