iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Exactly 10 years ago today, Matthew and I sat at the notary's office overlooking the city of Berlin, and signed the founding documents of our company, @explosion.ai. So much has happened since and we got to witness the field evolve, "AI" become mainstream, and hypes come and go. (1/8)

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

The video of my keynote "Build-to-own AI: Agentic Development for Humans" at PyCon Armenia & PyData Yerevan is live! I talk about building AI systems with agents, what these new agentic workflows mean for dev tools & why code and OSS are more important than ever ✊ www.youtube.com/watch?v=_36H...

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Attention Berlin people: On August 10 (next Monday), I'm co-hosting a meetup with Hugo and Jodie @t-redactyl.bsky.social at @jetbrains.com 🚀 Featuring: agents, agentic NLP, coding assistants and lightning talks. See you there! 📆 Mon, Aug 10, 6–9 pm 📍 JetBrains, Berlin ✅ RSVP: luma.com/agmd8ie4

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

At PyCon Armenia I finally got to meet Anna Vissens, Head of Data Science at @theguardian.com, in person! In her talk, she shared her team's in-depth analysis of sentiment towards immigration in parliament – using Prodigy for data annotation by humans and LLMs and spaCy for training classifiers.

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

I'm back from PyCon Armenia & PyData Yerevan ✨ This was such a fun and interesting trip and I enjoyed meeting many new people and getting to know Yerevan. Thanks to the organizers for inviting me and for putting on the event! Here are my highlights: www.linkedin.com/posts/inesmo...

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

I gave a talk on "Build-to-own AI: Agentic Development for Humans" at PyCon Armenia: how coding agents change the way we build ML systems and why code and programmable interfaces matter more than ever, not less. Here's the whole thing as a thread 🧵 (1/18)

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

In Yerevan, Armenia, for PyCon Armenia & PyData Yerevan! I'm giving the opening keynote on Friday (tomorrow) and will be talking about "build-to-own AI", agentic development for humans, and how to use AI to build better AI. Looking forward to seeing everyone and exploring Yerevan on my day off ✨

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# Ethan Hill @indoorhill.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Got an incredible delivery in the mail today, the coolest set of tech stickers 😍 I love these, especially “data science” in metal font 🤘 Thank you @explosion.ai, @inesmontani.bsky.social, @honnibal.bsky.social !! #nlp #spacy #python

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

📣 Attention Prodigy users: If you're already using Prodigy for annotation, we've put together a page on how our new tool and platform Ellf can help you scale up and automate your data development projects. beta.ellf.ai/prodigy

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

Just published a new blog post ✨ Our recent work got me thinking about Atomic Design by @bradfrost.com, a methodology for building web interfaces & how neatly it maps to how we've been approaching applied NLP: atoms (components) → molecules (pipelines) → organisms (applications) → pages (products)

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

The video of my talk at @pydatalondon.bsky.social is now live! I discuss the evolution of coding agents, why we should use LLMs to build systems, what's currently holding us back, and how we built a virtual assistant to help developers solve real-world NLP problems. www.youtube.com/watch?v=dA3z...

youtube.com

Ines Montani - Vibe NLP for Applied NLP | Pydata London 26

YouTube video by PyData

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Spent the weekend in beautiful Pavia, Italy, for Py4AI ☀️ I travelled with @honnibal.bsky.social and together we gave a talk about Vibe NLP and some of the new stuff we've been building. Here are some highlights: www.linkedin.com/posts/inesmo...

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Pietro Peterlongo @pietroppeter.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

“The shortest distance is not necessarily the best one, if you want to go to London you do not start walking there, you go on your computer do buy the tickets; same with llm, ask them to write code to do the thing”

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Some thoughts on how to do beta testing well, the importance of building things and using your own tools, and what we're currently doing:

We're fully back in "building new things" mode and have been thinking a lot about how to do beta testing for Ellf, our new tool for agentic NLP development, and how to make sure we're shipping updates quickly. One thing we've found from our other developer tools like spaCy and Prodigy is that it's crucial to be users of our tools as well. We need to be solving real problems and ship real projects ourselves.

Otherwise, it's way too easy to work in a bubble and build things that aren't actually useful in practice. So many features and improvements were direct results of us building things and stumbling over missing functionality, unideal UX or straight-up bugs. ("Why is this so bad, who wrote this? Oh... me.")

Ellf has a lot of moving parts: the coding assistant integration for project planning and NLP advice, the collaborative platform for annotation, batch jobs and agents, and the data-private cluster hosted by the user to run things and manage data. Ideally, we need to be doing and using all of it, and run as many end-to-end workflows as possible: plan a pipeline or component, create data, automate with agents, train a model, evaluate, iterate and collaborate.

So here's what we're currently doing:

With our beta partners, we've started scoping out practical NLP problems and are solving them at a big discount, while collaborating on development via the platform, and comparing Ellf's project advice to our solution. In the end, we get to ship real and fully independent deliverables – like a custom component, pipeline or workflow. To make sure we're getting to do many different projects, we're targeting very quick turnaround times of a few weeks and very clearly scoped deliverables.

We're especially interested in use cases like information extraction and structured data, turning LLM prototypes into modular pipelines that are better, faster, cheaper and private, human-in-the-loop distillation and of course data development.

So if you and your team need help with a burning NLP problem or use case and want to try out "Vibe NLP" and agentic NLP development, feel free to get in touch!

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

I'm back from @pydatalondon.bsky.social, so here's my obligatory recap with highlights ✨ www.linkedin.com/posts/inesmo...

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

In London for @pydatalondon.bsky.social! My talk on Vibe NLP and agentic NLP development is on Sunday, and there's a bunch of new stuff we've been working on that I can't wait to share and demo ✨ You'll also find me at the Feminist AI unconference on Saturday. Looking forward to seeing everyone!

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# Ethan Hill @indoorhill.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

Thank you to spaCy devs @explosion.ai (@inesmontani.bsky.social and @honnibal.bsky.social) for demoing their latest project, Ellf! Def an exciting tool to have in an NLP engineer's toolbelt. Ellf is fully private and makes the full model dev lifecycle for NLP projects agentic. Join the beta!👇 (0/2)

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Tuomo Hiippala @thiip.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

It's the second day of #LREC2026! If you're into #multimodality and collaborative annotation, come check out our work on building microtask pipelines for multimodal annotation on top of Prodigy by @explosion.ai. Find us in Session P6.1.2: Corpora and Treebanks V at Poster Area 2. Poster ⤵️

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

Want to be a beta partner of our upcoming product for agentic NLP? We're looking for teams who need help with their NLP projects, especially around tasks like information extraction. Ellf is a virtual assistant for NLP projects – think Claude Code, but with NLP superpowers, or "Vibe NLP" ✨

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

I'm back from @pyconde.bsky.social and here are some of my favourite moments and highlights 🖤 www.linkedin.com/posts/inesmo...

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

In Darmstadt for PyCon DE @pyconde.bsky.social and looking forward to a busy busy conference! If you're attending, come say hi – I'll be co-hosting the Feminist AI lounge on the third floor and giving a talk on Thursday and showing some of the very latest stuff we've been working on (vibe NLP!) 🔮

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Patrick J. Burns @diyclassics.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

Super-experimental at this point—but I am now embedding a local LLM inside Prodigy to assist with NER annotations... 1. Using `correct` recipe, LatinCy model tags likely entities 2. Optional "Ask LLM" button queries Mistral based on text/tags 3. Add'l RAG runs over the project's NER guidelines

Prodigy interface for LatinCy NER annotations... here Ov. Met. 2.5 and a PERSON label assigned to Mulciber

Prodigy interface for LatinCy NER annotations... here Ov. Met. 2.5 and a PERSON label assigned to Mulciber; "Ask LLM" button queries an "NER Assistant" and provides more context

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

I've been getting a lot of questions recently about optimizing annotation workflows – many new NLP projects are starting atm! ✨ To share some of our tips, I put together a blog post featuring examples inspired by real use cases and a checklist to help you get started. explosion.ai/blog/optimiz...

explosion.ai

The ultimate guide to optimizing annotation workflows · Explosion

This blog post collects tips and advice for how to build efficient human-in-the-loop data development workflows, break down business problems into actionable annotation steps and make the most of auto...

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

Back from a great PyCon Ireland #PyConIE in Dublin! 💚 As always, some of my personal highlights: www.linkedin.com/posts/inesmo...

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

Back from a few days in Amsterdam for PyData! Here are some of my highlights: www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

In town for PyData Amsterdam! Who will be there? 🙋‍♀️ Looking forward to chatting about NLP and more, some cool Feminist AI hacking and catching up with everyone. I also have some brand new and exciting dev tooling to demo for those interested ✨

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 18/06/2025

I was interviewed for a German article on it-daily about efficient AI development in industry, the role of open source, and using Generative AI to create systems and data for smaller models. Thanks Silvia for the feature! www.it-daily.net/it-managemen...

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

What a great meetup! Thanks to everyone who came by yesterday for an evening of real-world AI and bullshit-free strategies for building LLM applications. Recap and highlights: www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 09/06/2025

I'm back from a busy four days in London! 💜 I had a great time at @pydatalondon.bsky.social‬ and you can read my recap and highlights here: www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

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Tun @stereosky.bsky.social · 07/06/2025

At #PyData London @inesmontani.bsky.social confirms our suspicions that we should try not to work with PDFs directly. Do the expensive extraction upfront into a unified structured format and build all your analysis and #NLP components yourself so you can better modularise @pydatalondon.bsky.social

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

Hi Berlin people! @hugobowne.bsky.social is in town & we're celebrating by hosting a meetup together 🎉 This one is all about building with AI & we'll also open the floor for lightning talks. If you're around, come hang out with us! 📆 June 16, 18:00 📍 Native Instruments (Kreuzberg) 🎟️ lu.ma/d53y9p2u

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Matthew Honnibal @honnibal.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

Back to streaming spaCy! Working on Python 3.13 compatibility today: www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgjQ...

youtube.com

Streaming spaCy (May 19, 2025): Working on Python 3.13 compatibility

YouTube video by Explosion

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 26/04/2025

Another great @pyconde.bsky.social is over and I'm exhausted but happy, and feel very inspired! ⚡ Here are my personal highlights: www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

In Darmstadt for @pyconde.bsky.social 🐍✨ Tomorrow I'll be speaking about conquering PDFs and document understanding, and Thursday I'm joining the fireside chat panel on enterprise AI & open source. And I'll be around for the @feminist-ai.bsky.social LAN Party open hours to hack LLMs. See you there!

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 18/04/2025

Feminist AI is coming to @pyconde.bsky.social! If you're around, drop by at any time during the open hours and join us for workshops on hacking LLMs and data development, or contribute to our DIY PyCon zine ⚡ Follow for updates: @feminist-ai.bsky.social Details: feministai.party/events/2025-...

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Talk Python Podcast @talkpython.fm · 11/04/2025

The episode is now out on youtube, coming to podcast channels in a few weeks. Great show, thanks Ines!

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

Enjoying my train ride to Münster for data:unplugged! Tomorrow I'll be speaking about real-world use cases of AI, how to navigate black-box models and why open source means that nobody can monopolize AI (unless we let them) ✊ I will be around all day, so if you're attending, come and say hi!

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 05/04/2025

My friend @hugobowne.bsky.social launched new course on Building LLM Applications for Data Scientists and Software Engineers! I'll be joining for a guest lecture on human-in-the-loop development and distillation workflows. You can get 10% off with my code + lots of perks: maven.com/hugo-stefan/...

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

Announcing a new event initiative: Feminist AI LAN Party! Katharine and I did a pilot event last year and we're now taking it to @pyconde.bsky.social. We've also open-sourced event kits to make it easy to host your own, including: 💣 hacking LLMs 📑 data development ✂️ zine making feministai.party

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

I don't normally write advice columns but this question I got deserved its own post: With all the hype around Generative AI, how can you, as a developer, communicate the nuances and advocate for new and modular solutions that are better, easier and cheaper? explosion.ai/blog/modular...

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

So many good events coming up this season. Here's my schedule – hope to see you there! Apr 10: data:unplugged (Münster) Apr 23: @pyconde.bsky.social (Darmstadt) May 31: @pyconit.bsky.social (Bologna) Jun 5: ECONDAT (London) Jun 7-8: @pydatalondon.bsky.social (London) 📆 Details: explosion.ai/events

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Florentine Dömges @fdoemges.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

@explosion-ai.bsky.social Only the best companies will send you stickers if you are a fan and beg for them! Thank you so much, Ines and Matt!!!!

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

TIL: Incorrect music metadata is a huge problem and is causing artists to lose millions in royalties. This disproportionaly affects independent musicians. But structured NLP can help! explosion.ai/blog/love-wi...

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

New case study: How Love Without Sound built innovative AI-powered tools for the music industry and law firms, and helped publishers recover hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue for artists. explosion.ai/blog/love-wi...

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

Out now: Prodigy v1.18! New features include: ✍️ edit text during span annotation 💬 fully custom UI translations 🎛️ new JavaScript events and functions ✅ various small fixes and docs More details: prodi.gy/docs/changelog

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