Blog

AI agents, RAG, and integrations — notes from production.

Fixed Cameras vs Staff-Phone Capture for Shelf Monitoring

Shelf monitoring camera setup: fixed cameras give consistent input and a tighter model; staff-phone capture is near-free to roll out but adds accuracy variance.

Confidence Calibration for a Detection Model: Making the Score Mean Something

Detection model confidence calibration: a raw 0.9 isn't 90% accurate, and confidence routing sets thresholds on that number. Fix it with temperature scaling.

Model Quantization for Edge Inference: Trading a Little Accuracy for Speed

Model quantization for edge inference converts 32-bit weights to fp16 or int8 - fp16 is near-lossless, int8 needs calibration and a measured accuracy check.

ONNX Runtime and Model Portability Across Mixed Store Hardware

ONNX Runtime for edge deployment: export the model once, run it through whichever execution provider matches each store's hardware - no per-device build.

Single-Shot vs Two-Stage vs Transformer Detectors: Why YOLO Wins on the Edge

An object detection model for a retail shelf runs on edge hardware, so single-shot detectors win on speed - two-stage and transformer models are slower.

Search Analytics: The Queries That Tell You What's Wrong With Your Catalog

Ecommerce search analytics is honest customer feedback - zero-results, high-exit, and low-conversion queries each point at a catalog or relevance problem.

Zero-Results Pages: Turning a Dead End Into a Recovery

A zero results search page is a near-certain exit - recover it with labelled relaxed results, a did-you-mean, nearest categories, and by capturing the query.

AI Support for High-SKU Retail: When Product Questions Outnumber Order Questions

For high-SKU retail, most support contacts are pre-purchase product questions - compatibility, sizing, specs - a grounded retrieval problem.

AI Support for Marketplaces: Handling Buyer–Seller Disputes

A marketplace support agent gathers evidence from both sides and resolves the clear cases; it doesn't adjudicate disputes, it assembles them for a human.

AI Support for Subscription Businesses: Cancellations, Pauses, and Save Flows

A subscription support agent handles lifecycle actions - cancel, pause, plan change - as money-adjacent write actions, plus billing questions.