Strategy Update — Monday, February 9, 2026
Editor's note. This is the update where the Engine / Forge / Lab framework first lands in writing. Erik continues to use this taxonomy in later updates (see April 4, 2026) — it's worth understanding as a recurring mental model:
- Engine — Exacta, TwinSpires, TFG/Polaris, Quantum (paying customers)
- Forge — B4M Pi, VibesWire, VibesTrader (calculated bets with identified customer zeros)
- Lab — Speculative work, Games
Original format was a quick note — lightly groomed for the archive with structure passes and a TL;DR. Voice preserved.
Headline shifts this week
- Exacta opens a new front. Nimai secured funding for the Charitable Gaming extension of the HHR product line — a 5–6 month push, possibly needing 1–2 more devs. Kevin to lead with stronger project management and months-ahead tasking.
- Polaris is in stabilization mode. Drain the issue count for the next two weeks (Analyst Home, Dynamic Home, Signal BEV Calculator, normal bugs). After that — and after Erik consolidates his four Always Live Market Model experiments — he'll ask for more help and push the model hard.
- New framework: Engine / Forge / Lab. Explicit way to talk about where each project sits and what it deserves.
- B4M CLI v0.2.27 is production-ready. Feature-complete for dev workflows. Head-to-head with Claude Code below — unique strengths in self-hosting, knowledge-base search, and native MCP servers.
- Quantum: Iter-QAOA going public. Drive to a full paper and a fully public repo. Matt picks the next paper. Optimal-Viz demo is Erik's main focus this week.
Exacta
Nimai successfully secured funding for the new Charitable Gaming extension of the HHR product line. This is a big push for 5–6 months and he will be ramping up with more work — possibly needing 1–2 more devs.
Kevin — you are leading this effort. Nimai needs strong(er) project management and wants the team to have solid tasking months out into the future.
Related: invest hard in CC / B4M CLI skills and check out the B4M Pi project management effort. Ideally you would also develop new features for B4M Pi, but at minimum you would be customer zero.
TFG — Polaris
So much going on, but right now we are just going to drain the issue count. Analyst Home, Dynamic Home, Signal BEV Calculator, normal bugs, etc. For the next two weeks: clean up and drain down issues.
Erik needs help — really needs help
The Always Live Market Model is a big effort. Erik has four different experiments going in parallel:
- Lattice in the B4M repo
- Pro-Forma in Napkin BizPlan
- Experimental in Polaris
- Optimal-Viz
- (Plus a robust discussion on Erik's blog)
After the issue drain, and after Erik gathers the experiments together, he will ask for more help and push the Always Live Market Model hard.
Polaris tooling debt
- An API is an excellent debugging tool. We need to add an API to Polaris like B4M has. Example use case: add the 2,000 companies via the endpoint, agentically, testing as we go.
- Worried about the fidelity of the user fab files as a data source as we grow in size. ML will tell us.
- Mobile and Voice — Anthropic Real-Time API and Eleven Labs are on the backlog once the above is done.
TwinSpires
The team is just humming along on both BeeHive and OneBris. Thank you Angelo, Victor, Rexen, Ken, Kyle especially for strong leadership all around.
Hard goals
| Target | By |
|---|---|
| Player Services is 100% on BeeHive (not Boss) | Derby 152 |
| Some portion of OneBris is alive and selling PDFs | Derby 152 |
Quantum
Matt and Isao — great team. Finish Iter-QAOA — drive to a full paper, going for that fully public repo.
Matt picks the next paper to reproduce — truly your choice. Beyond the first two, we want a body of 3–6, 8, maybe 10 reproductions over time to show off our tooling and chops.
We are now working at a good clip and Erik is confident we will spend our compute credits at a strong cadence.
Push for a demo of the Optimal-Viz solution hard this week (and next). That is Erik's main focus — see below.
Bike4Mind
The integrations with GitHub are working really nicely now. Erik had a really strong experience using mobile on a drive home, being able to ask B4M what are my open issues?
- Mobile: speaking of which — we should be ready to submit to Apple and Google and get B4M Mobile approved.
- B4M CLI — still P1. Erik is using CC for non-code as much as code. We are close — just need to actually try it.
- B4M Pi — SRE Loop.
Other moving pieces:
- QuestMaster — integrations, 1D plans, auto run, UX updates.
- Chess.
B4M CLI v0.2.27 — production-ready
Head-to-head with Claude Code as of this update:
| Capability | B4M CLI | Claude Code | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core Agent | |||
| Agent architecture | ReAct (custom) | Proprietary | B4M has explicit parallelization |
| Parallel tool execution | ✅ Yes (configurable) | ✅ Yes | Tie |
| Subagents | ✅ 3 types (explore/plan/review) | ✅ Multiple types | CC has more agent types |
| Background tasks | ✅ Job management + grouping | ✅ Yes | Tie |
| Tools | |||
| Built-in tools | 30+ | 15+ core | B4M has more specialized |
| File read/write | ✅ With diff preview | ✅ With diff preview | Tie |
| Web search/fetch | ✅ Serper + fetch | ✅ Built-in | Tie |
| Git integration | ✅ + recent_changes tool | ✅ Full git support | CC stronger git |
| Astronomy tools | ✅ 5 tools | ❌ None | B4M unique |
| Blog publishing | ✅ Native | ❌ Via skills only | B4M unique |
| Knowledge base search | ✅ Enterprise feature | ❌ None | B4M unique |
| MCP | |||
| MCP support | ✅ Full | ✅ Full | Tie |
| Built-in servers | GitHub, LinkedIn, Atlassian | None built-in | B4M has more OOTB |
| Custom servers | ✅ npx / Docker / executable | ✅ Yes | Tie |
| Skills & Commands | |||
| Custom skills | ✅ Markdown-based | ✅ Markdown-based | Same format |
| Agent delegation per skill | ✅ Yes | ❌ No | B4M unique |
| Skill hooks | ✅ pre/post/on-error | ✅ Yes | Tie |
| Context & Memory | |||
| Context files | CLAUDE.md + AI.md layers | CLAUDE.md | Same approach |
| Session persistence | ✅ SQLite + JSON | ✅ Local storage | Tie |
| Auto-compaction | ✅ At 80% context | ✅ Yes | Tie |
| Conversation rewind | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | Tie |
| Permissions | |||
| Permission system | 3-tier (auto/ask/deny) | Multi-tier | Similar |
| Trust locations | local/project/global | Similar | Tie |
| Diff preview | ✅ For file ops | ✅ For file ops | Tie |
| Shift+Tab auto-accept | ✅ Yes | ❌ No | B4M unique |
| UI / UX | |||
| Terminal UI | Ink (React) | Custom | CC more polished |
| Image paste | ✅ iTerm2 / Kitty | ✅ Yes | Tie |
| Streaming output | ❌ Complete messages | ✅ Token streaming | CC wins |
| IDE integration | ❌ None | ✅ VS Code | CC wins |
| Auth & Deployment | |||
| Authentication | OAuth device flow | Browser-based | Both work |
| Self-hosted support | ✅ Yes (/set-api) | ❌ No | B4M unique |
| Cost tracking | ✅ Per-session | ✅ Yes | Tie |
Key differentiators
| B4M CLI advantages | Claude Code advantages |
|---|---|
Self-hosted deployment support | Token-level streaming |
Stable & shipped
- Full ReAct agent with parallel execution
- 30+ tools with permission system
- MCP integration (3 internal servers)
- Subagent system (explore / plan / review)
- Custom skills with Claude Code format compatibility
- Background agent execution
- Session persistence and rewind
- Debug logging with
--verbose
Recent version history
| Version | What landed |
|---|---|
| 0.2.27 | Web fetch as first-class tool |
| 0.2.26 | Claude Opus 4.5 / 4.6 support |
| 0.2.25 | Parallel tool execution, background workflows |
Verdict. B4M CLI is feature-complete for developer workflows and has some unique enterprise features (KB search, self-hosting). Main gaps vs Claude Code are streaming output and IDE integration.
Engine / Forge / Lab — the framework
A way to talk about where each project sits and what posture it deserves.
| Tier | What it is | Projects (as of this update) |
|---|---|---|
| Engine | Paying customers. The revenue line. Stability and velocity bar is highest. | Exacta, TwinSpires, TFG (Polaris), Quantum |
| Forge | Calculated bets with identified customer zeros. Building toward Engine. | B4M Pi, VibesWire, VibesTrader |
| Lab | Speculative. Games. Lower bar; higher creative latitude. | (Speculative work, Games) |
Forge
VibesTrader
In Michael Conard's hands to move forward.
VibesWire
Looking really strong. Open list:
- Tune system prompt.
- Add sharing links.
- Add Vibed Comments.
PotionQuest
Huge update — a whole RPG API and AIs playing AI-made stuff.
Lab / Adjacent
Optimal-Viz
The lab demo Erik is pushing hard this week (and next) — see Quantum above. Connects to the Always Live Market Model thread.
LibreOncology
Reference: libreoncology.com/courses/fundamentals/practical-aspects
Lightly groomed for the b4m-strategy archive on 2026-05-17. Original written 2026-02-09. Dollar-amount references for compute spend were generalized to fit the scope of this repo; the actual figures live in the comp/finance materials.