Much of my applied research work at Intercom focuses on understanding the boundaries of current AI technology. In production environments, it's not enough to know what AI can do—we need to understand where it breaks, what tradeoffs we're making, and how to push these boundaries in practical ways. This work centers on two critical areas: (a) the limitations and tradeoffs inherent in AI agents, and (b) the competency and adaptability of open-source models for real-world production use cases.