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What is Observe and Report?
Observe and Report is a personal blog by Jeremy C. Kahn, published at jeremyckahn.github.io. It is a running collection of essays on software engineering and the direction of the tech industry, not a product, service or documentation site. Posts are dated and listed newest-first on the home page, so the site reads as a chronological notebook of opinions and arguments rather than a structured reference.
H3 What you will find there
- Commentary on AI and developer tooling, including the impact of large language models on language server protocols and the case for running AI locally.
- Career and industry essays, such as a survival guide for the modern tech career.
- Web platform topics, including progressive web apps, "unkillable" applications and a speculative piece on the future of the web.
H3 Who it suits
- Developers who want opinionated takes on where tooling and AI are heading, rather than tutorials.
- Readers who prefer a single author's consistent point of view over aggregated news.
- Anyone researching PWA trade-offs or local AI arguments who wants a starting perspective to react to.
The trade-off is the usual one for a personal blog: depth and a coherent voice, but no editorial process, no guarantee of coverage breadth, and no structured index beyond the post list. If you want a neutral overview of a topic, this is a place to form questions, not to settle them.
A practical next step: open the post list and read the two or three entries closest to your current problem, checking their dates first, since the AI and web-platform pieces reflect the moment they were written. For a broader, more frequently updated view of similar ground, compare against established developer publications such as CSS-Tricks or Smashing Magazine, and treat this blog as the opinion layer on top.
What topics does Observe and Report cover?
Observe and Report is a personal blog that reads mostly as a working developer's notebook: long-form essays on artificial intelligence, web development and the shape of a tech career. The visible post list clusters around a few recurring themes.
AI and machine learning in practice. Several titles treat large language models as tools to be reasoned about rather than hype to be repeated. "Local AI is the Only AI" and "LLMs and the Total Eclipse of the LSP" suggest an interest in how model-driven tooling changes everyday development work, including editor and language-server workflows. "Where the Agentic Winds Blow: Moving at Machine Speed" extends that into agentic systems and the pace they impose on teams.
Web platform and app architecture. "A Future of the Web," "Unkillable Apps," "The Agony and Ecstasy of PWAs" and "YAB: Yet Another Blog" point to progressive web apps, durability of software, and what the browser can and cannot do well. This is the kind of writing that helps when you are deciding between a native app, a PWA or a plain website.
Career and industry commentary. "The Modern Tech Career: A Survival Guide" and the more personal "So it Seems" sit alongside the technical posts, so expect reflection on jobs, skills and staying useful as tooling shifts.
Who it suits. A developer or technical lead who wants opinionated essays rather than tutorials or release notes. If you need step-by-step code, this is probably not the first stop; if you want arguments about where local AI, agents and web apps are heading, it is.
A practical next step: open the archive and read the two or three posts closest to your current decision — for example, the PWA and "Unkillable Apps" pieces if you are choosing a delivery target, or the LLM and local-AI posts if you are weighing hosted versus on-device models. For a contrasting, more news-oriented take on the same subjects, Hacker News discussion threads often pair well with this style of essay.
How does Observe and Report approach agentic AI and machine-speed development?
Observe and Report is a personal blog whose "Posts" list shows a clear editorial focus on AI-driven development and the future of the web. The most recent entry, "Where the Agentic Winds Blow: Moving at Machine Speed," signals that the author treats agentic AI as a working change to how software gets built, not just a topic to comment on.
What the page shows
The blog's post archive mixes AI subjects with web-platform subjects: "LLMs and the Total Eclipse of the LSP," "Local AI is the Only AI," "A Future of the Web," "Unkillable Apps," "The Agony and Ecstasy of PWAs," and "YAB: Yet Another Blog."
Read together, the titles suggest a consistent angle: the author is interested in the tooling layer where AI meets day-to-day engineering. "Machine speed" in the newest title implies a focus on faster iteration loops, and the LSP post points to a specific concern — whether language servers and similar developer tooling still make sense when a model can reason about code directly. "Local AI is the Only AI" suggests a preference for running models on your own hardware, which usually means trading raw capability for privacy, cost control, and offline reliability.
Who it's for
This reads as writing for working developers and technically fluent readers deciding how to adapt their workflow, rather than for people looking for introductory AI explanations. If you already use editor tooling and have opinions about it, the framing will land.
How to use it
Start with the newest post, then read "LLMs and the Total Eclipse of the LSP" and "Local AI is the Only AI" as a pair — the first covers what changes in your tools, the second covers where the models run. That combination is the practical decision most teams actually face: adopt agentic assistance in the editor, or keep the work local.
For broader context on the same themes, Simon Willison's Weblog covers LLM tooling closely, and Martin Fowler writes on engineering practice and how AI changes it.
What insights does Observe and Report offer on the modern tech career?
The site's most directly relevant piece is "The Modern Tech Career: A Survival Guide," a post dated 2026-08-17 in its archive. Based on the page evidence, that entry sits alongside other posts about agentic AI, LLMs, local AI, PWAs and a "future of the web," so the career advice is framed by the author's broader interest in how tooling and platform shifts change what developers actually do day to day.
What you can expect from the career post
- A survival-guide framing. The title suggests practical guidance rather than a trend report: what to learn, what to protect, and how to stay employable as the ground shifts.
- A technology-driven lens. Given neighbouring posts on machine-speed agents and LLM tooling, expect the career discussion to be tied to automation and AI changing job content, not just generic networking advice.
- A personal, opinionated voice. The blog is a single-author site with essay-style titles ("Unkillable Apps," "Local AI is the Only AI"), so the value is in the argument and reasoning, not a neutral survey.
How to use it
Read "The Modern Tech Career: A Survival Guide" first, then skim the two or three surrounding posts to see which arguments it builds on — the archive ordering makes that easy. If you want a second, more conventional industry view to compare against, Stack Overflow Blog publishes regular pieces on developer roles and hiring.
Who it suits
Developers and technical leads deciding where to invest learning time, especially those who suspect AI tooling is reshaping their role. It is less useful if you want salary data, job listings or structured career frameworks — the evidence points to essays, not reference material. Treat the posts as one practitioner's argument to test against your own situation, not as a settled consensus.
Why does Observe and Report argue that local AI is the only AI?
"Local AI is the Only AI" is a post title on Observe and Report, a personal blog whose index lists it among dated entries. The page evidence shows the title and its position in the archive, but not the argument inside the post, so the specific reasoning is not something I can quote or summarize from what's supplied here.
What can be said is structural: the claim works as a provocation. "Only AI" reads as a stance that cloud-hosted models, however capable, don't count as real or trustworthy AI for the author's purposes, while locally run models do.
What a local-first argument usually rests on
Posts with this framing typically draw on some combination of:
- Control and continuity. A model running on your own machine keeps working when a vendor changes terms, raises prices, deprecates a model version or shuts down an endpoint.
- Privacy. Prompts and documents never leave the device, which matters for personal notes, health details, legal drafts or client work.
- Cost predictability. You pay for hardware and electricity rather than per-token usage that scales with how much you use it.
- Offline operation. Useful on a plane, in a workshop, or anywhere the connection is poor.
The trade-offs that argument has to absorb
Local models generally give up raw capability, speed on large contexts and ease of setup compared with hosted frontier models. Hardware requirements are real, and keeping a local stack updated takes effort. A reader deciding whether the "only AI" position applies to them should ask which of these they can't live without:
| If your priority is… | Local tends to suit you when… | Hosted tends to suit you when… |
|---|---|---|
| Sensitive text | Data must not leave the device | You have a compliant vendor agreement |
| Cost | Usage is steady and high-volume | Usage is spiky or occasional |
| Capability | Your tasks are routine | You need top-tier reasoning or long context |
| Reliability | You can't tolerate API changes | You depend on the vendor's uptime and updates |
For a concrete case: someone drafting a novel or handling client contracts on a laptop may find a local model good enough and preferable on privacy grounds, while someone building an agent that needs the strongest available reasoning will likely keep a hosted model in the loop.
The useful next step is to read the post itself rather than the title — the argument's strength depends on which of the above it leans on and how it handles the capability gap.
What does Observe and Report say about the future of the web and unkillable apps?
Observe and Report treats those as two related arguments about resilience. Its post "A Future of the Web" looks at where the web platform is heading, while "Unkillable Apps" makes the case that software should keep working even when the company or service behind it disappears. Read together, the blog's position is that the web's long-term value comes less from any single app and more from durable, open foundations that outlive their creators.
The practical thread across the blog is decentralization and local control. "Local AI is the Only AI" argues for running models on your own hardware, and "LLMs and the Total Eclipse of the LSP" examines how AI is changing developer tooling. "The Agony and Ecstasy of PWAs" and "YAB: Yet Another Blog" cover the trade-offs of building on web technology, while "Where the Agentic Winds Blow" and "The Modern Tech Career" extend the same lens to AI agents and working in tech.
A concrete reader scenario: you rely on a note-taking or chat app that shuts down, taking your data with it. An "unkillable" approach favors formats and clients you can run yourself, so the service's demise doesn't erase your work. The trade-off is real—self-hosting and local tools cost setup time and give up some polish and convenience.
Start with "A Future of the Web" for the broad argument, then "Unkillable Apps" for the design principles. If you want the local-first angle, add "Local AI is the Only AI." Browse the archive at Observe and Report.
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