An API’s first
impression.
Improving API Explorer code snippets through developer feedback, design iteration, and checks for technical accuracy.
Gareth Paul Jones
Product Lead, AIPoe / Quora
Explore the workI like the part where research meets a real product: deciding what good behavior looks like, finding a way to test it, and staying close enough to the work to build the first version.
A place to work things out. AI illustration
This imagined shared workshop is a visual metaphor for building with people. Generated with GPT-Image-2 for this website; it does not depict a real workplace, project, or event. The narrow-screen view shows the center of the same illustration.
View the complete illustrationWork, in practice.
Before AI products, I worked on the platforms developers build with. A few decisions from Twilio and Foursquare, in my own words.
An API’s first
One payload.
Different needs.
Some developers wanted dropoff geos; others found them confusing. We made that data optional and documented the choice.
From API to
a working thing.
A small Go project for searching places, displaying venue information, and proposing edits to Foursquare’s data.
Selected writing about the work. Editorial headings; original titles and context at each link.
The longer career storyResearch, product & code
Working through
the AI questions.
Practical sessions on evaluation, model behavior, and the work of building with agents.
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Evals for AI Agents — watch on YouTube
Testing agents against the work we actually expect them to do.
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Building a Multi-Signal Reward Function — watch on YouTube
Combining imperfect signals into a more useful training objective.
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Managing Coding Agents with Swimlanes — watch on YouTube
Keeping parallel coding agents legible, scoped, and moving.
Also worth
writing down.
Browse the writing
A product lesson · Foursquare
The viewfinder
wasn’t the answer.
We built an AR way to discover restaurant reviews. People preferred a list. An account of a feature we sunset, and what I wish we had asked before building it.
Read the Foursquare AR reflection
A personal
corner of the web.
Online since 2002.
I still code because it is often the shortest route from a fuzzy idea to an honest conversation. Away from the screen, most of my spare time is with my wife and daughter. The rest tends to disappear into golf or taking something apart.
More about meGood conversations welcome.
About the images & type
The workshop is a commissioned AI illustration, not a record of Gareth’s work. The portrait is the original photograph used by this website. Archivo type by the Archivo Project Authors, licensed under the SIL Open Font License.
Original portraitComplete AI illustrationFont license