{"podcast":{"title":"Vanishing Gradients","slug":"vanishing-gradients-4989163","podcast_index_feed_id":4989163,"rss_url":"https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/2632531.rss","website_url":"https://hugobowne.substack.com/podcast","image_url":"https://substackcdn.com/feed/podcast/2632531/e8d57d9d781f20857949c2678ef8c9c2.jpg","author":"Hugo Bowne-Anderson","episode_count":77,"summary":"a data podcast with hugo bowne-anderson","last_synced_at":null,"page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/vanishing-gradients-4989163"},"episode":{"title":"Episode 68: A Builder’s Guide to Agentic Search & Retrieval with Doug Turnbull & John Berryman","slug":"episode-68-a-builder-s-guide-to-agentic-search-retrieval-with-doug-turnbull-john-berryman","published_at":"2026-01-23T00:41:51+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/vanishing-gradients-4989163/episode-68-a-builder-s-guide-to-agentic-search-retrieval-with-doug-turnbull-john-berryman","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/vanishing-gradients-4989163","url":"https://hugobowne.substack.com/p/episode-68-a-builders-guide-to-agentic","audio_url":"https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/185389085/77b0d5cd523ddde3893eda7ef8768c49.mp3","summary":"The best way to build a horrible search product? Don’t ever measure anything against what a user wants. Search veterans Doug Turnbull (Led Search at Reddit + Shopify; Wrote Relevant Search + AI Powered Search ) and John Berryman (Early Engineer on Github Copilot; Author of Relevant Search + Prompt Engineering for LLMs ), join Hugo to talk about how to build Agentic Search Applications. We Discuss: * The evolution of information retrieval as it moves from traditional keyword search toward “ agentic search “ and what this means for builders . * John’s five-level maturity model (you can prototype today!) for AI adoption, moving from Trad Search to conversational AI to asynchronous research assistants that reason about result quality. * The Agentic Search Builders Playbook , including why and how you should “hand-roll” your own agentic loops to maintain control; * The importance of “revealed preferences” that LLM-judges often miss ( evaluations must use real clickstream data to capture “revealed preferences” that semantic relevance alone cannot infer) * Patterns and Anti-Patterns for Agentic Search Applications * Learning and teaching Search in the Age of Agents You can find the full episode on Spotify , Apple Podcasts , and YouTube . You can also interact directly with the transcript here in NotebookLM : If you do so, let us know anything you find in the comments! 👉 Want to learn more about Building AI-Powered Software? Check out our Building AI Applications course . It’s a live cohort with hands on exercises and office hours. Here is a discount code for readers. 👈 Doug and Hugo are also doing a free lightning lesson on Feb 20 about How To Build Your First Agentic Search Application ! You’ll walk away with a framework & code to build your first agentic search app . Regist…","meta_description":"The best way to build a horrible search product? Don’t ever measure anything against what a user wants. Search veterans Doug Turnbull (Led Search at Reddi…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":5322,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/vanishing-gradients-4989163/episodes/episode-68-a-builder-s-guide-to-agentic-search-retrieval-with-doug-turnbull-john-berryman/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/vanishing-gradients-4989163/episode-68-a-builder-s-guide-to-agentic-search-retrieval-with-doug-turnbull-john-berryman.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}