Today's article is a short one. Short by my standards, which, as you know, is a very relative concept 😂
I've spent weeks thinking about how to make The Neural Maze even more valuable for you, and I can finally tell you: three new formats are on the way. One to learn how to actually design AI systems, one to hear from people who really know what they're talking about, and one to filter out the week's noise without losing your mind.
Let's get into it!
AI Systems Design Sessions
Let's start with what, for me, is the main course.
I'm convinced that System Design is the skill of the future. And of the present, really: it's already one of the things most tested in AI Engineering interviews. The funny part is that almost nobody is teaching it. There are a thousand tutorials on building a RAG in 10 minutes, but very few show you how to think through a complete system.
If you've been reading me for a while, I've already shown you how to build an OCR System or a Durable Agent. But I've never explained in detail what happens before the first line of code: how I approach the design, which tradeoffs I weigh, why I pick one piece and discard another.
Much of that comes from experience (read: getting things wrong many, many times). My goal with this series is to distill that experience so you can understand it, apply it and benefit from it, without taking all the hits I took along the way.
How it will work
From now on, the live sessions will revolve around the AI Systems Design Sessions. And we'll do it through challenges: I'll give you a real problem and we'll design it together, one tradeoff at a time.
Preparing and planning these sessions is taking a huge amount of work. That's why they won't be open to everyone: they'll be reserved for premium subscribers of The Neural Maze.
Very soon I'll share the details: when the first issue of the series drops and, more importantly, what the first challenges will be. Start warming up …
The Neural Guest
Yes, I know. With this section's title I'm giving you a ton of hints about who's joining me this weekend. I'm practically spelling it out for you. Just pretend you didn't see it.
Jokes aside, the second format is interviews. But not light "tell us about your morning routine" interviews. I want to bring in industry experts, builders of real products, engineers from top companies and content creators I value and respect. People we can have conversations with that actually add something.
If you watched my interview with Alex Razvant about NVIDIA GTC, that's exactly the style I have in mind.
And here's the good news: these interviews will be available to all subscribers, free and premium!
The Neural News (AI News, but Anti-FOMO)
And now we get to the format I'm most excited about.
I'm always complaining about the noise in this industry. "AI Influencers" whose only contribution is sharing 100 links to 100 different Claude Skills, or a lazy digest of some frontier lab's latest announcement. Honestly, I can't stand it.
I've complained a lot and done very little, I admit it. So I asked myself: what if I tried to fix it?
The Neural News is exactly that. An AI news email, yes, but anti-FOMO. Here's the idea:
It'll land on Mondays, every week or every two weeks (still to be decided, haha).
It'll be a practical, engineering-focused recap of what happened in the previous week or weeks.
It'll tell you what matters for your work and what you can safely ignore.
The Neural Maze doesn't answer to any frontier lab or any company. So I'll be objective (or subjective, because at the end of the day it'll be my opinion). And if all the "BREAKTHROUGHS" of the past few weeks add NOTHING to your work as engineers, I'll tell you straight. My hand won't shake, hehe.
This Weekend's Live Session: Behind the Maze
To wrap up this short article (short by my standards, I insist), I want to invite you to this weekend's live session:
It's free, so you're all invited. I'll go deeper into everything I've teased here: The AI System Design Sessions, The Neural Guest and The Neural News.
And the best part: I won't be alone. I'll be joined by another content creator, and a great friend, who will be my partner in crime for The Neural News and The Neural Guest.
Can you guess who it is? And no, the title of the interviews section doesn't count as a hint. Or maybe it does. See you in the comments!
Looking forward to the AI Systems Design Sessions! Excited about this new development and the future of The Neural Maze. Really appreciate what you're doing, Miguel🙏🏽