klyff.org✳

LEARN · PRACTICE · THINK TOGETHER

A curious mind.
An open notebook.
A shared journey.

I'm Klyff Harlley. I write, research, and build at the intersection of AI, engineering, and human judgment.

I share what I learn, the questions I’m living with,
and the ideas taking shape along the way.

Explore my notebook ↓

My new book — FREE ↓

Full-body illustrated Klyff Harlley in a black Alo T-shirt, twill trousers and white leather sneakers, with Maori-inspired tattoos on both arms
Klyff Harlley ToledoEngineer. Author. Curious human.

02 / THE BOOK

Build with purpose.
Grow your impact.

My sixth book, The High Leverage Engineer, is ready and free for people who want to turn AI-assisted engineering into work they can trust and explain.

We work through specifications, bounded agent loops, evidence, and delivery—so that speed becomes useful, and responsibility stays visible.

FREE · 2026English · Português do Brasil · Español · Français

Knowledge is for sharing. Digital editions are free. Printed copies cost only printing and shipping; I charge no royalties for shared knowledge.

A place for curious minds.Knowledge grows when we share it. ↗Everyone belongs here.

LEADN.KLYFF.ORG / LEARN BY BUILDING

Learning, with room to experiment.

Explore the free training with certificate on leadn.klyff.org, then practice with these small exercises inspired by the book.

Smiling illustrated Klyff, with a transparent background

LEADN.KLYFF.ORG · FREE TRAINING WITH CERTIFICATE

Read it. Build it. Share what you learn.

A free course on The High Leverage Engineer, built with agents in hours—including a clone of my own voice. An open source platform for creating complete courses with agents.

Free Training with Certificate ↗
01 ↗

FOUNDATIONS · START ANYWHERE

Think before
you prompt.

Explore how judgment shapes AI-assisted work. Then define a problem before asking a model to solve it.

Begin with the essays ↓
02 ↗

ENGINEERING · BUILD ON THE BASICS

Direct the work.
Inspect the result.

Connect the book's Agentic SDLC ideas to a small, bounded task with a clear definition of done.

Explore the book ↓
03 ↗

INQUIRY · FOLLOW YOUR CURIOSITY

Read the source.
Test an assumption.

Use primary documentation to explore agents or digital identity. Separate a documented capability from your own hypothesis.

Choose a research question ↓
One companion. Ready to explore.
✳

Learning has room for small pauses. Ask Chimbler for a reflection prompt. She's a provisional illustrated companion, with a very real enthusiasm for your reading time.

01 / READING & IDEAS

What I'm thinking about.

AI moves quickly. I want to make room for the thinking that lasts.

PRACTICAL PLAYBOOK · DEC 30, 2025

From Tool User
to Problem Owner

My playbook for taking responsibility for the result.

Full essay on LinkedIn ↗

A SMALL DETOUR

The future needs curious people.

And occasionally, a scientist and a very fluffy co-pilot.

03 / RESEARCH

Questions before answers.

These are directions I'm exploring, with sources you can examine for yourself.

TECHNICAL PAPER · OCTOBER 23, 2026

BSH is a layout,
not a context limit.

An abstract, explicit equations, three reproducible figures, and a careful separation of attention, cache, and recurrent state—beyond the 270k-token claim.

Read the research note ↗
Analytical chart contrasting quadratic score storage with linear KV-cache memory

TECHNICAL STUDY · AUDIO & MUSICAL SIMILARITY

When two songs sound alike.

Tempo, pitch, synthesis and Euclidean distance. Listen to original examples and inspect matching regions, histograms and local alignment paths.

Read the study and hear the examples ↗
01

AGENTIC ENGINEERING

How do we know an agent did useful work?

I want to connect clear task boundaries with evidence of accepted outcomes. My starting point is to study model capabilities in context, rather than treat a model name as a guarantee.

Exploration
02

SELF-SOVEREIGN IDENTITY

Can trust travel with the person?

I'm interested in identity systems that let people present verifiable claims without making every interaction depend on a single platform. I start with the standards, then ask what a useful implementation would require.

Exploration

Personal research framing · October 23, 2026. These are questions and reading paths, not published research findings or model evaluations.

04 / VENTURES & PRODUCTS

From a question to something useful.

I care about the journey from technical possibility to a problem worth solving.

Project

Predix

I connect my engineering work with questions about decision-making and prediction-market infrastructure. Visit Predix's own site for the current product story.

Meet Predix ↗
Open conversation

Founders, builders & VCs

I welcome thoughtful conversations about startups, AI, and products in development. Bring a concrete problem, a difficult assumption, or an idea we can examine together.

Start a conversation ↗

A FUTURE LEARNING SPACE

A cloud IDE.
A place to practice together.

I'm imagining a shared workspace where we can train concepts from the book, try small experiments, and learn from what happens. It's a proposal in development, with no release date yet. A future experience may include a full-body Klyff avatar walking alongside Chimbler; that feature is not available yet.

Coming soon · concept stage
the learning workspace / a concept

01 Start with a question.

02 Make a small experiment.

03 Look at the evidence.

04 Learn. Together. ▍

YOUR NEXT CHAPTER STARTS WITH CURIOSITY.

05 / ABOUT KLYFF & FAMILY

A human behind
the work.

I'm Klyff Harlley Toledo—a software engineer, architect, researcher, and author. I bring engineering and business outcomes into the same conversation, and I enjoy making what I learn useful to others.

Family belongs in this story, too. I'll share the moments and introductions we choose to make public here, in our own time.

Find me on LinkedIn ↗

A MANIFESTO TAKING SHAPE

Open knowledge.
Safe intelligence.
A wider human horizon.

I want to help shape a future where access to code and the ability to understand, use, and develop AI expand human agency.

Working proposal for discussion with Klyff · Not a final or signed manifesto.

01 Access that creates agency +

Make code, learning resources, and the skills to question systems easier to reach. Meaningful access includes the ability to understand, contribute, and build.

02 Safety as a shared practice +

Pair experimentation with evidence, human accountability, and proportionate safeguards. Openness and careful release decisions should strengthen each other.

03 AI and AGI in service of humanity +

Keep human dignity, choice, and broad participation at the center. The purpose is to expand what people can learn and achieve, rather than concentrate their dependence.

04 An expanding human horizon +

Direct our curiosity toward scientific discovery, new frontiers, and humanity’s long-term flourishing—on Earth and beyond—with responsibility for the people affected along the way.

✳

There's a place for you here.

Whatever your race, color, sex, gender, physical or mental condition, nationality, or planet of origin: you're welcome. All you need is a willingness to share knowledge and learn alongside others.

Say hello ↗
Illustrated sunset view toward Santa Monica beach and pier from Palisades Park
Keep a little room for the horizon. · Santa Monica

Read the published essay ↗

This is a concise reading note. The linked publication is the full original essay.