Think fast

Chatbot APIs vs WebSockets

With the ongoing rise of generative AI, chatbots are becoming more and more prevalent. This includes a huge range of use cases across all industries. Chatbots are also becoming more sophisticated, including taking autonomous actions based on conversations with users. So, developers must be familiar with the tools and techniques that are required to output chatbot solutions. Today, we’re diving deep into an important subtopic within this, by checking out two of the most common communications techniques we’re going to encounter - Chatbot APIs and WebSockets.

Ronan McQuillan

Jun 13, 2025

Generative AI vs Agentic AI | Use Cases, Tool Stacks & Benefits

Agentic AI is one of the hottest topics in the world of enterprise technology. This is leading businesses in all industries to rush to adopt AI agents, in pursuit of efficiency gains and enhanced accuracy within workflows. However, as with any other new technology, it’s vital that we have a firm grasp of the key concepts that underpin it. Today, we’re exploring one of the most important elements to this by examining the relationship between generative AI and agentic AI, including what each one is, how they work, when they’re used, and where they overlap.

Ronan McQuillan

May 30, 2025

10 Agentic AI Use Cases

Agentic AI is probably the hottest topic in the world of enterprise IT. In fact, software vendors in just about every niche have added agentic AI features to their products over the past couple of years. However, in the real world, adopting AI agents isn’t such a straightforward process. On the one hand, many teams struggle to determine the right tools for their needs in a fast-evolving market. On the other hand, in their rush to roll out solutions, some companies lose sight of the need for provable ROI.

Ronan McQuillan

May 23, 2025

What is Tool Calling?

Currently, interest in agentic AI is exploding. IT teams in all industries are rushing to implement solutions that utilize autonomous agents to power workflows. This not only requires AI models that can perform reasoning, but ones that can also take action based on this. That’s where tool calling comes in. Tool calling, also sometimes referred to as function calling, is what enables an agentic AI system to interact with connected tools, services, and resources in order to perform tasks within workflows.

Ronan McQuillan

May 19, 2025

6 Self-Hosted & Local LLMs

With fast-advancing technology, running AI models locally is no longer the preserve of massive enterprises or researchers. Today, smaller businesses and even hobbyists are also leveraging self-hosted LLMs within development projects. Thanks to advances in model quantization, local runtimes and runners, and smaller yet highly capable models, it’s increasingly viable to run LLMs in cloud containers or even consumer hardware. But, of course, this introduces a range of challenges. One of the biggest is choosing the right model for our needs.

Ronan McQuillan

May 14, 2025

What are NLP Applications? + 5 Real-World Examples

Natural language processing is revolutionizing the way humans interact with software tools. Not only that, the increasing prevalence of AI is opening up the door to a huge range of transformative use cases that would be almost impossible with traditional automation tools. Of course, this isn’t news. We constantly hear how AI is reshaping just about all aspects of how businesses operate. Today, we’re thinking about this in more practical terms by checking out some of the most prevalent NLP applications that you can build and deploy right now.

Ronan McQuillan

May 9, 2025

10 Open-Source LLMs

AI is becoming an integral part of more and more software projects. However, building effective, production-ready solutions relies on having the right model to power our application. Naturally, this requires us to determine which model is best positioned to meet our technical requirements. Depending on our needs, this will either mean embedding the model in our app, or calling out to an external model via its API or MCP server.

Ronan McQuillan

May 7, 2025

What are Enterprise Chatbots? In-Depth Guide

Enterprise chatbots are fast becoming a critical part of successful digital transformation strategies in large organizations. Service portfolios are more complex than ever, cutting across a huge variety of internal departments, processes, and tooling. At the same time, there’s a more urgent need than ever to establish efficient workflows without compromising on security. Today, we’re exploring one option for dealing with these competing challenges by diving deep into how enterprise chatbots offer a scalable solution for streamlining access to services.

Ronan McQuillan

May 1, 2025