Learnings at every turn: the same journey, worked from 2 ends. A Home lab box (my machines, my time; local and frontier models; evals, receipts, traces; G&J, MACONA, personal) and a Work box (frontier scale; many models per request; scored on evals; quality, speed, cost). Arrows: proofs of concept, specs and PRDs go from home to work; patterns at scale come back from work to try at home.

Learnings at Every Turn: A Frontier-Scale Router Comes Home

BLUF (bottom line up front): Abram Jackson, PM for extensibility of Copilot for Microsoft 365, wrote this week: “Yes, it’s not just a simple router. We use multiple models for a single request, based on which combination scores highest on our evals.” My home lab has been teaching me the same lesson from the other end. Learning flows both ways: what I prove at home shapes what I take to work, and what I see at frontier scale at work shapes what I try at home. This post is the latest turn of that loop, and yes, the pun in the title is intended :-) ...

November 2, 2026 · 6 min · Fabian Williams