AI Agents. Open Models.Real Problems.Let's Talk

Exploring AI, building with AI agents or open models, or solving a real technical challenge? Whether you're an individual, a team, or an organization, book a discovery call and we'll work through it together.

Book a Call

Setup your own AI Agent

WHAT PEOPLE SAY AFTER A SESSION

“I had a very positive experience speaking with Mr. Melvin. He was nice, cheerful, and very encouraging throughout the conversation.”

300+trained

50+mentees

Personal AI Agent Setup

Personal AI Agent Setup Service

I set up Hermes, an open-source personal AI agent with its own memory that learns new skills and adapts to you, on the computer you already own. One agent set up directly, or several managed with GAIA, my setup tool. You choose.

Hermes is the agent: it works for you, not just answers questions
GAIA is optional: my tool for running multiple private agents on one computer
Your data stays on your machine, not on someone else's servers
Hands-on setup call — questions first? Message me on LinkedIn

See the Setup Service Message me on LinkedIn

Optional GAIA dashboard managing multiple Hermes AI agents on one computer

Optional GAIA tool managing Hermes agentsLearn more

Wherever you are with AI, there's a call for you

Every session is 1-on-1 and tailored to you. Book 15, 30, or 60 minutes, whatever your question needs. No question is too small: if it's about AI, it's on the table.

Personal AI

New to AI? Perfect, start here. I'll help you set up your own AI agent for everyday life: notes, research, planning, right inside the chat apps you already use.

See the Setup Service

AI at Work

Learn to get real work done faster with AI: simple tools and workflows you can start using the same day, whatever your job is.

Talk about AI at work

Build & Integrate

Building a product? Get a second brain on what to build, how to add AI to it, and how to go from idea to something real.

Talk through your build

Updated August 9, 2026

Latest AI news for builders and leaders

Fresh artificial intelligence news, model releases, AI agent updates, research, and enterprise AI announcements curated from primary sources.

View all AI news

ResearchAug 8, 2026

Stanford–Arc Evo models design 16 viable bacteriophage genomes in Science

Stanford and Arc Institute researchers report in Science that genome language models Evo 1 and Evo 2 generated complete bacteriophage genomes templated on ΦX174; nearly 300 candidates were synthesized and 16 viable E. coli–infecting phages with substantial sequence novelty were confirmed (DOI: 10.1126/science.aec2657). A cocktail of the AI-designed phages rapidly overcame ΦX174 resistance in lab-evolved E. coli strains where natural ΦX174-like cocktails failed, pointing toward more durable phage-therapy design while underscoring biosafety needs (human-infecting viruses were excluded from training; work used non-pathogenic hosts). Evo 2 weights remain open for research use.

Source: Stanford UniversityRead source

SecurityAug 7, 2026

OpenAI pauses Astra work after evals cannot rule out critical cyber capability

OpenAI said internal evaluations of Astra—an upcoming model not involved in the Hugging Face incident—show significant advances in agentic coding and cybersecurity, and that it cannot currently rule out Critical cyber capability under its Preparedness Framework (autonomous zero-days in hardened systems or end-to-end novel attacks from a high-level goal). The company is scaling safeguard and security-control testing, implementing stricter controls for higher-capability models (isolated eval environments, restricted network/tool access, enhanced weight protection, sandboxed execution), pausing internal Astra activities that do not yet meet those requirements, adding universal monitoring of Chain-of-Thought for risky/misaligned agentic actions, and planning government and AI-safety-org testing before any deployment.

Source: OpenAIRead source

ModelsAug 7, 2026

Anthropic retunes Claude Fable 5 biology safeguards, cutting fallbacks ~85%

Anthropic updated Claude Fable 5’s biology safety classifiers to cut false-positive “fallbacks” (reroutes to a less capable model) by about 85% across product surfaces after rewriting the classifier constitution with expert feedback and retraining—so everyday health/education questions and more clinical support get through far more often. Dual-use biology (virology, toxicology, molecular design) still falls back to Claude Opus 5, so Fable 5 is not yet usable for professional research or drug development; Anthropic says trusted-access pathways will close that gap. Footnoted product impact: total fallbacks expected down ~67% on Claude.ai, 55% on Cowork, 17% on Claude Code, and 7% on the Claude Platform.

Source: AnthropicRead source

Meet Your Mentor

25+yrs

300+trained

Book an AI Q&A Call Connect on LinkedIn

Melvin Vivas

Engineer, mentor, and your friendly guide to AI

I help everyday people, professionals, and founders make sense of AI, and no question is too basic. Most of my mentees started exactly where you are now.

Behind that is 25 years of engineering across banking, fintech, and enterprise. These days it's hands-on work building AI apps and running my own daily life on a personal AI agent.

Whether you're a student, a working professional, a leader, or a founder, you'll get someone who's done the work and explains it in plain language.

Senior roles at Standard Chartered Bank & Ohmyhome (Nasdaq)

Built AI Dream Photo, an AI photo app used by real customers

Building aibackends.com, free open-source AI tools for developers

Building skillsbento.com, an AI Agent Skills marketplace

Speaker at NTU Singapore, PSIA, and DICT Philippines

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU) Open Mentoring: Connecting Minds

Live & unscripted

Watch my past livestreams

The easiest way to get a feel for how I explain things: watch me build with AI, live. No edits, no script, mistakes and all.

Let's explore ChatGPT / OpenAI APIs

A relaxed walk through the OpenAI platform and APIs, explained from scratch.

Build a React Native ChatGPT app with Cursor, OpenAI, and Expo

A full app built live, from empty folder to working AI chat on a phone.

Enrich your Life and Work with AI

A talk on bringing AI into your everyday life and work, in plain language.

Watch my NTU Singapore workshop demo More livestreams on YouTube

My personal AI

What I actually ask my AI

These are real conversations with my personal AI agent lately:

“Every hour during trading hours, remind me about my stock investments”“Read these screenshots from my kids' school app and remind me of the deadlines”“What happened at the F1 British Grand Prix?”“Any Wimbledon updates?”“Find me a decent monitor to replace my old one”“What Korean drama should I watch next?”“Give me some non-software business ideas”“Summarize this video posted on X”“Make me a video”

Notice anything? None of it is about coding. My AI is a personal agent that helps me run everyday life. You can have one too. I'll set up Hermes on your computer (GAIA is optional if you want multiple agents), around your own routines.

Get your own personal agent Book a call

Invited to speak by these organizations