Author: MartijnVeldkamp
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What Darmok and Jalad Can Teach Us About Governing Meaning in Agentic AI
Report this article Patrick Parker Patrick Parker Published Sep 8, 2026 + Follow In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Darmok,” the Universal Translator is working and still fails. It can translate the Tamarian words. What it cannot translate is the shared story behind them. “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” only becomes meaningful when…
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Human override is a Queue
Doesn’t it look pretty? Human override is a Queue Report this article Martijn Veldkamp Martijn Veldkamp Published Oct 7, 2026 + Follow We are delivering systems where we bolt on AI and put a human in the loop. And by doing so we gave her 4,000 decisions before lunch. That sentence could describe more then…
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Confidence is not a Control
Just because it looks green and fuzzy, does not mean it is actual governance Confidence is not a Control Report this article Martijn Veldkamp Martijn Veldkamp Published Oct 19, 2026 + Follow Imagine an agent recommending something and adding “94% confident” underneath it. Nice green number, perhaps a little shield icon. You know, the sort…
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Demo Debt
Apparently it is a podcast image? Demo Debt Report this article Martijn Veldkamp Martijn Veldkamp Published Oct 30, 2026 + Follow “But it worked in the demo”. I think that sentence deserves a place next to “it is only a small change” in the enterprise technology hall of fame. Possibly engraved on something expensive. Imagine…
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Slack is not waste
(No, not the enterprise app, the unbooked space in your calendar. Also this is not an attack on Lean, well not meant now in this article, who knows, I might write that later.) My horses have never accepted a utilisation target. They need hay before the old supply is finished, water capacity they are not…
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The Exit Door is part of the Architecture
Every supplier contract contains an exit clause. Most of us read some form of termination section in a contract. Some have and declared the lock-in problem solved. There was a notice period, an export clause and even a promise to help us leave. Legal had done their job, procurement had done their job, everyone had…
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They cannot buy ASML
For most of this year, the top of OpenRouter’s token leaderboard has been Chinese. Not one model sneaking in at number 8, the top of it, week after week, at something like two thirds of everything flowing through the platform. A year before that the same providers were under 2%. I have been circling this…
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Geely bought Volvo first
A few weeks ago I mentioned that one of our chickens has decided the old red Volvo is her spot. She sits on the bonnet in the morning like she paid for it. The car now permanently smells faintly of horse and slightly of chicken, which I am told is not a Volvo option package.…
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Overcapacity is a Strategy
We have a drawer in the kitchen that has become a graveyard for many things, including lighters. Every time I fire up either the fireplace or the barbecue I cannot find one, so I buy 3 more, and then somehow all the old ones turn up at once. Anyway, bear with me. Last week I…
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Regulation is a design input
Here in the Netherlands you do not decide how many cows you want and then go build a barn. It runs the other way around, and it is a little bit brutal process about it. Your land has a so called phosphate allowance. The manure rules, the nitrogen rules, the whole beloved circus of mestwetgeving,…