Thorsten Ball: One Jev API Call Now Matches What Took Cursor Fine-Tuning Two Years Ago
Register Spill (Thorsten Ball) · rss · 2026-09-20
Issue #100 of Thorsten Ball's Joy & Curiosity newsletter centers on Jev, a small model for fast structured decisions rather than text generation.
- Jev works like a "smart if-statement": unstructured state in, typed probabilistic decisions out, orders of magnitude faster and cheaper than using an LLM for fixed-option classification
- He had Amp build a shell autocomplete, a Neovim plugin (hunch.nvim) predicting your next jump line, and a prototype that switches models via the Amp Dial—all one API call at 200ms; two years ago Zed had to fine-tune its own model to reach Cursor-league edit predictions
- His thesis: collapsing cost/latency creates new categories, like computers inside lightbulbs
Also inside: the case that humans will stop routinely reviewing code (Marc Brooker, AWS), the "Product Engineer" argument, software industry barbell-ification, Gruber on Apple's event, and more.
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