AI

Hands-on guides to LLMs, agents, prompt engineering, and the AI tools Botmonster runs every day for real work, not demos.

A four-tier risk pyramid under a ring of EU gold stars, with a deadline milestone sliding forward along a calendar timeline and a small robot at the minimal-risk base

EU AI Act rules and deadlines for developers in 2026

EU AI Act compliance deadlines moved in July 2026. High-risk rules now start December 2027, but bans, GPAI duties and AI labeling already apply.

Robotic arm assembling a document page while a brass-mounted lens reflects the finished layout back to its optical sensor

OfficeCLI turns 50 lines of Python into a single command

OfficeCLI lets AI agents edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files from one binary, and renders them to HTML or PNG so the agent can check its own work.

A giant open book built as a walled amphitheatre of lit chapter alcoves, wrapped in a heavy chain and padlock, with a lone figure standing outside the gate

Dive into LLMs has 11 free chapters and no open license

The Dive into LLMs course ships 11 hands-on chapters with slides and notebooks, all in Chinese, with no license file and no update since October 2025.

A giant blue whale gliding low past two brass balance scales weighed down by a golden crown, symbolizing a cheap model outpacing costly rivals

DeepSeek V4-Pro runs 39x cheaper than Claude Opus 5

DeepSeek V4-Pro pricing runs about 39x cheaper per task than Claude Opus 5 for a 10-point intelligence gap, and it ships open weights under MIT.

Speech bubbles funnel into a teal machine that outputs a steel flange with six bolt holes on a conveyor

Ask for a flange and CAD Skills hands you a STEP file

Text to CAD agent skills turn a plain sentence into a STEP file, with 11 skills covering CAD, DXF, URDF, slicing, and local Bambu Lab print jobs.

An origami crane balances level on a brass scale against two tall crystal monoliths, with an open padlock and keys nearby.

Qwen3.8-Max matches Claude Opus 4.8 and might go open

Qwen3.8-Max pricing lands at $2/$6 per million tokens, matches Claude Opus 4.8 on intelligence, and promises open weights for a Max-class model.