Building Ari, note #2: behind the magic
Ari can now understand attachments: screenshots, logs, PDFs. A customer drops in a log file and Ari pulls the error straight out of it. This is one of my favorite features we've added to Ari. Here's a quick demo from an early version.
Here's what building it actually looked like.
Migrating to a new SDK version, so it would accept file types that aren't images. Sniffing MIME types because someone sends a PDF named screenshot.png. Sanitizing file names. Being defensive about broken and malformed inputs. Chasing latency, measuring runs and trying variations to keep it fast enough. Wiring in deterministic guardrails so our zero data retention promise holds. And covering a wider attack surface: prompt injection, text hidden in a screenshot, commands buried inside a PDF.
A powerful feature sitting on unglamorous work. The plumbing is invisible in the video, but it's what makes the video possible.