Next week I’m sitting down with @rasbt, independent AI researcher, author of Build a Large Language Model (From Scratch) and Build a Reasoning Model (From Scratch), and creator of Ahead of AI, which just crossed 200,000 subscribers. Since we last spoke, Sebastian and I have been messaging about the insanity of DeepSeek-V4, then GLM-5.2, and now Kimi K3. Qwen3.8 is about to land as well. I’m excited to ask him: • What are these new models actually doing differently? • What do stronger open-weight models mean for local coding agents? • Which parts of our agent systems will survive the next model release? • What did he learn by starting with a small Qwen3 model and adding evaluation, inference-time scaling, reinforcement learning, and distillation himself? What do you want me to ask Sebastian? Reply with your questions and I’ll ask my favourites live. @ManningBooks is giving away five ebook copies of Sebastian’s new book to the people who ask the best questions. They’re also providing a 45% discount for the audience. We’re live July 28. Registration link below.