Luke Oliff · Blog
Writing.
Original posts, published first on this site. Imported posts live in the archive.
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260 posts
2026
Pricing wars are good for developersOriginalThree TTS providers changed pricing in the same week, all in one direction: down. Cheaper voice is good for developers, and the trend is not slowing.Opinion
Building a writing routine that actually sticksOriginalA daily writing habit that finally works: one post a day, a weekly format rota, and a hard time box that forces the draft to exist.Developer Experience
Finding the rhythm: first impressions of a new role in a new corner of AIOriginalFinding the rhythm two weeks into a new DevRel role: what surprised me about text-to-speech, what I was right about, and what I am still figuring out.Developer Experience
Lessons from my first two weeks in a new corner of AIOriginalTwo weeks in voice AI on the text-to-speech side: a new community, a new set of constraints, and a definition of quality nobody quite agrees on.Developer Experience
Onboarding at a new company: what I wish I had knownOriginalOnboarding at a new company after years at the same one: imposter feelings that hit harder, domain knowledge that transfers slowly, and remote loneliness.Developer Experience
Voice AI mid-2026: the trends I am watchingOriginalQuality convergence, pricing pressure, open-weight models, and the regulatory shift. The voice AI landscape halfway through 2026.Voice AI
What surprised me about TTS API design after years of STTOriginalAfter years of speech-to-text, TTS API design broke my assumptions: output parameters everywhere, SSML that fights you, and speech marks nobody mentions.API Design
Working in public vs working in privateOriginalDeveloper relations means producing content in public while the product is being built in private. That tension is harder to manage than I expected.Developer Experience
5 voice AI stories that shaped the start of JulyOriginalThe five voice AI stories that shaped early July: OpenAI's voice reasoning model, ElevenLabs at $22B, Deepgram going multilingual, and Gemini using a computer.Voice AI
Someone Asked ChatGPT to Scream. It Did.OriginalA viral TikTok showed ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode screaming on command. Two screeches, one awkward silence, and a lot of questions about what we just watched.AI