Matt Westaway

CEO & Co-founder of Voyc

[Matt Westaway @mattwestaway]

It's been an intense session, but the evolution of AI from rules to RAG to agentic systems is incredible! 🚀

[Matt Westaway @mattwestaway]

1/🧵 Just finished another Agentic AI class at Johns Hopkins! 🎓 Key learnings: Agentic RAG vs normal RAG.

Data chunking: *metadata filtering* becomes crucial. A "self-querying tool" separates filters from the query to retrieve relevant chunks — great for date-based filtering!

[Matt Westaway @mattwestaway]

12/ For an agent to be rational, it needs to do the best with what it has. *Query transformation* helps improve recall — another vital piece of the puzzle 🧩.

[Matt Westaway @mattwestaway]

Chunking is the hidden trap ✂️
Too small = sharper search, but the chunk loses context → wrong info lands in the prompt.
Fix: chunk at natural breaks, search small, retrieve the BIG parent chunk for the model. And LLMs forget the MIDDLE — so keep key info at the end. ✅

[Matt Westaway @mattwestaway]

Week 1 of the Agentic AI Program at Johns Hopkins 🎓
(Just finished the Generative AI Program ✅)
How AI got here:
1️⃣ A rule for everything → impossible
2️⃣ ML: patterns + probabilities (1990s)
3️⃣ LLMs: a brain in a jar — clever, but passive

[Matt Westaway @mattwestaway]

The plot twist: you don't need the strongest model if your retrieval (RAG) is great.
RAG = 3 parts:
📚 Knowledge base
🔎 Retriever (the search)
💡 Generator (the LLM)

[Matt Westaway @mattwestaway]

I like the point from @steipete that running agents is easier for an engineer who has been a founder before given they don't really write code anymore. But then also the point that sometimes you need to go 1:1 with an agent. Also the point on nobody valuing AI slop and "if you want attention, be human" and if you want a better chance of having your PR accepted into Openclaw "have some typos in your PR or submit your logs to prove effort". https://t.co/6d3HlLEcHA

[Matt Westaway @mattwestaway]

Great article on what's behind Loveables credit costs. Main takeaway is writing the app requirements in PRD can save 30-45% of costs. Plan mode also no brainer at 1 credit a message regardless. https://t.co/V02uBtVSO3

[Matt Westaway @mattwestaway]

Oh and lastly Openrouter has a cool feature to run a classifier on all your input prompts and tag them accordingly so I've added this so I can see what I'm actually using OpenClaw for

[Matt Westaway @mattwestaway]

Saturday night AI tinkering learnings...🧵