Publications from the Carpathian team

Research papers, release notes, security write-ups, and company news. Everything we publish about the infrastructure we run, the models we build, and what we learn operating both.

27 of 94

Featured

Free Unlimited AI Chat: No Caps, No Limits

Chat with a capable AI model for free on Carpathian. No message caps, no token limits, no metering on chat.

GeneralJun 28, 202610 min read
Read the article

All publications

Release Notes 2026.8.0

Release Notes 2026.8.0

This update brings a fully redesigned website, Veritate AI, free threat intel feeds, Spark snapshots/restores, and billing.

Press ReleaseAug 7, 20269 min read
Self-Hosted LLM vs API: A Cost Breakdown

Self-Hosted LLM vs API: A Cost Breakdown

Self-hosting an open-weight model or calling a hosted API? The drivers on each side, the break-even point, and the hidden costs.

GeneralAug 5, 202611 min read
#llm hosting#self-hosted llm#api cost
What Building Infrastructure Taught Us About Trust

What Building Infrastructure Taught Us About Trust

Years of building infrastructure taught me that trust is earned quietly, honesty about limits beats big promises, and locking people in is a slow death.

ResearchAug 3, 20269 min read
#infrastructure#trust#enshittification
How to build semantic RAG AI search

How to build semantic RAG AI search

A walkthrough of how to build semantic search with embeddings using RAG AI to index and chat with your docs, and when keyword search still wins.

GeneralAug 2, 20268 min read
How to use AI to pull data from images and PDFs

How to use AI to pull data from images and PDFs

How to turn scanned images and PDFs into typed fields your app can store, using local OCR and a language model, with the validation that keeps poor quality out.

GeneralAug 1, 202611 min read
How to build an AI that ranks content appeal

How to build an AI that ranks content appeal

We built a tool that scores titles and headlines with an LLM. Here is how to make the model grade consistently, hold a strict format, and stop it refusing.

GeneralJul 31, 202611 min read
Why software development teams slow you down

Why software development teams slow you down

The textbook development lifecycle was built for a different era. Most of its ceremony delays the thing that matters.

GeneralJul 30, 20268 min read
Why We Self-Host Our AI: The Case for Owning Your Infrastructure

Why We Self-Host Our AI: The Case for Owning Your Infrastructure

We chose to run our own AI infrastructure instead of building on closed APIs. Here is the case for owning your stack, and the honest cost of doing it.

GeneralJul 27, 20268 min read
#self-host ai#ai infrastructure#vendor lock-in
Why Efficient Inference Beats Brute Force

Why Efficient Inference Beats Brute Force

I am convinced the future of useful AI is small, efficient, often task-specific models, not an endless race for the biggest one. Quality per watt beats brute force.

GeneralJul 24, 20268 min read
#small language models#efficient inference#AI infrastructure
How to Add AI Content Moderation to Your App

How to Add AI Content Moderation to Your App

AI content moderation done right runs cheap rules first, let a model judge the gray area, and flag the high-stakes calls for a human. Here is how we built it.

GeneralJul 24, 202613 min read
Using AI to help developers, not replace them

Using AI to help developers, not replace them

The useful question about AI in software is not how many engineers it replaces. It is how much faster it makes the good ones. Here is how we put it to work.

GeneralJul 23, 20268 min read
The Hidden Energy Cost of AI, and What Low-Power Inference Could Look Like

The Hidden Energy Cost of AI, and What Low-Power Inference Could Look Like

The AI energy cost is treated as an inconsequential while the power demand is at the size of some countries and why efficiency, not scale, is the future.

ResearchJul 18, 20267 min read
#ai energy cost#data center energy#sustainable ai

Why Data Quality Decides Small-Model Quality

On saturated consumer hardware, you do not buy small-model quality with a faster framework. You buy it with better data and a better training objective, with numbers to back it.

ResearchJul 16, 20265 min read
#small models#data efficiency#byte-level models

LLM Decoding Without Changing Output Bytes

Speculative decoding and multi-token prediction cut byte-level generation latency without touching output quality. Here is what we measured on Veritate's models

ResearchJul 15, 20265 min read
#speculative decoding#multi-token prediction#byte-level models

Why Low-Bit QAT Needs to Happen In Training

Below roughly four bits per weight, post-hoc QAT on byte-level models is catastrophic, and quantization-aware training recovers nearly all of the lost quality

ResearchJul 14, 20265 min read
#quantization-aware training#post-training quantization#low-bit LLMs
Making an LLM Efficient By Optimizing Thinking Time, Not Parameter Count

Making an LLM Efficient By Optimizing Thinking Time, Not Parameter Count

For a model that must fit on a small device, the parameter budget is fixed. The place to spend is inference-time compute.

ResearchJul 13, 20265 min read
#test-time compute#inference-time compute#small language models
Upcycling the Data Center: Doing More AI With Older Hardware

Upcycling the Data Center: Doing More AI With Older Hardware

We throw away a staggering amount of perfectly useful compute. Here is why a lot of AI and cloud work can run on older, upcycled hardware, and where it honestly cannot.

ResearchJul 12, 20267 min read
#data center e-waste#sustainable computing#hardware lifecycle
Managed vs Self-Hosted Databases: Which Should You Pick?

Managed vs Self-Hosted Databases: Which Should You Pick?

Managed or self-hosted? How to choose, compared on cost, maintenance, backups, and uptime, with the honest middle ground and a decision checklist.

GeneralJul 11, 202611 min read
#Database#managed database#self-hosted database
IaaS vs PaaS vs SaaS, Explained Simply

IaaS vs PaaS vs SaaS, Explained Simply

IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS in plain terms: what the provider runs, what you run, examples of each, and how to choose the model that fits your project.

GeneralJul 10, 202611 min read
#iaas#paas#saas
Data Sovereignty Matters More Than You Think

Data Sovereignty Matters More Than You Think

A region setting tells you where your data sits. It does not tell you whose laws can reach it. Why I think sovereignty is about to become a front-line concern.

GeneralJul 10, 20268 min read
#data sovereignty#data residency#CLOUD Act

Long-Context Memory For Constant-State Models

The conversation-needle benchmark, the transfer-gap finding, bitwise-exact streaming state carry, and the open programme for training past-window recall.

VeritateJul 10, 202620 min read

How A 121M Byte Model Learned To Talk

The three-phase recipe behind chat80m, the first conversing byte-level model in the project, its knowledge wall, and the identity-dosing discovery.

VeritateJul 10, 202620 min read
What Is a CDN, and Do You Need One?

What Is a CDN, and Do You Need One?

What a CDN is, how edge caching speeds up your site and cuts server load, and the honest answer on when a small site needs one and when it does not.

GeneralJul 10, 202611 min read
#cdn#content delivery network#edge caching

The Composed Efficiency Stack

Byte-level training efficiency on one consumer machine: Muon, boundary patching, constant-state recurrence, and the hybrid trunk that beat both of its parents.

VeritateJul 10, 202619 min read