My Road to i80

The Spark

I love to cook. Not by the book, but with intuition, memory, and whatever ingredients are at hand. Over the years, I have built a rich personal archive: dishes invented on the fly, surprising flavor combinations, and moments of improvisation captured in photos, notes, and conversations.

Then, in January 2023, I encountered ChatGPT. I was blown away by its ability to answer questions and generate ideas. I would ask about cuisines, techniques, or flavor pairings, and the responses were impressive. But when I asked, “What did I cook that night with salmon and miso?”, the reply came through as: “I don't have access to your personal cooking history.”

For all their brilliance, large language models did not know my stories. They could not access the unique experiences, preferences, and memories that make me who I am.

The Turning Point

That is when it hit me: what if I could build an AI that feels like an LLM but knows what I know? Not a generic model trained on the internet, but a personal system capturing my cooking stories, thought processes, and unique way of seeing the world.

I imagined an AI that could answer, “What would I have cooked with those ingredients?” or even “How would I have approached that problem?” — not based on generic data, but on my own lived experience.

This led me to the idea of a domain-aware AI Agent: not just a chatbot, but a system that can understand a question, search trusted knowledge, decide how to respond, and stay grounded in the right context. Underneath, it combines structured knowledge, semantic retrieval, orchestration, and controlled use of LLMs. The goal is easier to understand: build an AI Agent that knows a specific world deeply.

Why “i80”

The name “i80” is inspired by the interstate highway built for clarity, structure, and speed. Just like that road, this system is meant to navigate complexity with confidence: no guesswork, no detours, just grounded, context-aware answers that get you where you need to go.

Beyond Cooking

My vision goes beyond cooking. It is about creating AI that can act like an extension of a person, team, or organization — preserving knowledge, patterns, and perspective for future reflection and practical use.

The same approach can empower organizations such as hotel guest services, HR help desks, onboarding assistants, product support agents, and many other knowledge-heavy domains where public LLMs fall short because they lack trusted, domain-specific knowledge.

The Challenge Ahead

Building an AI Agent that knows a person, a business, or a domain is no small task. It requires blending the expressive power of LLMs with curated knowledge, reliable retrieval, careful orchestration, and clear boundaries.

But that is the road I am on: a path to AI that does not just answer, but remembers, reasons, acts, reflects, and resonates.

A Living Journal

This website documents my road to i80. Through this space, I will share what I am learning along the way: the breakthroughs and the dead ends, the tools and techniques, and the insights that emerge when intuition meets iteration.

Whether it leads to a fully functioning personal AI Agent, a new kind of storytelling engine, trusted domain agents for businesses, or something I have not imagined yet, I am here to explore it.

— Alex P. Wang
October 28, 2024