Notes from the studio
More from the studio
June 28, 2026Five days at Delta Bootcamp: every lesson, and what I changed in Sussur
The full field notes from the first Delta Bootcamp by Launch Romania, mentor by mentor: Irina Scarlat, Andy Budd, Zoltan Vardy, Jason Meresman, Cosmin Curticapean and Marius Nedelcu, plus what I rebuilt in Sussur two weeks after.
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June 27, 2026Café Cursor Bucharest: Cursor is not a VS Code fork anymore
Café Cursor Bucharest landed the same week Cursor became a $60B company. Notes on the SpaceX deal, why Cursor was never just a VS Code fork, the room reckoning with enterprise, and the Sussur talk I gave.
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June 27, 2026DevNights 6: the room is worth the trip
I made the trip from Constanța to Bucharest for DevNights 6. Notes on why community matters when you build with AI, what an honest room is worth, the people I want to build with, and what DevNights actually is.
Read the story- ●GuidesJune 25, 2026
Technical co-founder, agency, or fractional CTO: how to actually decide
A non-technical founder with an idea has three ways to get it built. Here is the honest trade-off between them, including the equity math nobody puts in the pitch.
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June 23, 2026AI House, and the case for smaller rooms
Field notes from a curated, house-format AI gathering in Otopeni. The argument: in AI right now, information is cheap and honest conversation is expensive, and a room of fifty builders is the fastest way to buy it.
Read the story- ●AIJune 20, 2026
Build, buy, or wrap: how to add AI to your product without overpaying
Adding AI to your product is a build-vs-buy-vs-wrap decision, not a yes-or-no. Here is how to choose, where the cost actually hides, and when each one wins.
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June 18, 2026Why we build nearshore from Romania
Nearshore from the EU trades a higher hourly rate for a shared working day. Here is what that actually buys an EU, UK, or US founder.
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June 18, 2026RAG vs fine-tuning: which one does your AI feature need?
Teams reach for fine-tuning when they usually mean grounding. Here is the honest difference, and why most products want retrieval first.
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June 18, 2026A technical due diligence checklist that prices risk, not pages
What a technical audit should actually look at before an investment or acquisition, and what a useful report contains.
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June 14, 2026We opened our Constanța studio
On 14 June 2026 we opened the Basetool Labs studio at the Millennium Hub & Hotel in Constanța. A night of rubber ducks, a frog named Pepe, the first look at Sussur, and the people we build with.
Read the story- ●announcementJune 1, 2026
Hello from Basetool Labs
First post on the Basetool Labs blog. Notes from the studio on AI, engineering, and shipping custom software.
Read the story - ●designApril 24, 2026
What makes a good personal website in 2026
Personal sites are not resumes. They are trust compression tools. Notes on what works, what screams "AI-generated", and how to build one that earns the click.
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