Levi Lee

Writing

Notes on AI, building, and startups — plus career, life, and a few stray thoughts.

  1. 01

    Before You Reach for a Vector Database: Keyword Retrieval in the Agent Era

    Why do the strongest coding agents mostly reach for grep instead of a vector database? Notes on keyword retrieval, BM25, SQLite FTS5, Chinese tokenization, and why — in the agent era — retrieval is a workflow. Ending with the bigger shift from RAG to context engineering.

    Jun 1, 2026
  2. 02

    I vibe-coded this whole site from my phone

    From buying the domain on Spaceship and deploying on Cloudflare's free plan, to driving Claude Code from my phone, reviewing and merging PRs on GitHub, and wiring up GA4 and Google Search Console — I built this entire site without a laptop. How far phone-only "vibe coding" can actually go in 2026.

    May 30, 2026
  3. 03

    Python 101: The Syntax You Actually Need Before Your First AI Project

    Variables, conditionals and loops, lists and dicts, functions, and how to read a program — the core Python you'll actually use before building an AI project, with runnable examples. A follow-up to the NTU AI Club's first class.

    May 29, 2026
  4. 04

    Setting Up Your AI Dev Environment from Scratch

    For people who've never written code — from why Python, to the difference between an IDE and a terminal, to installing Python, package management, and the API-key mistake that's easiest to make. This was my first class at the NTU AI Club.

    May 28, 2026