Red Hat

Structuring the Unstructured - Cedric Clyburn, Red Hat

Jun 28, 2026 · 20:41

Cedric Clyburn (Red Hat) demonstrates how Docling, an open-source tool from the Linux Foundation, converts unstructured documents like PDFs, tables, and images into structured formats (Markdown/JSON) for AI workflows. He shows that naive PDF parsers lose table structure and image content, while proprietary VLMs are expensive and non-deterministic. Docling uses OCR and layout analysis to preserve context, achieving 50x cost savings compared to VLMs on CPU. The demo covers extracting tables and images from an 8-page PDF, using a local Granite vision model for image annotation, and implementing chunkless RAG where an LLM queries a Docling document outline directly. Scaling is addressed via Docling Serve (REST API) and Docling MCP server for agentic document processing with tools like Claude Code.

Lobster Trap: OpenClaw in Containers from Local to K8s and Back — Sally Ann O'Malley, Red Hat

May 22, 2026 · 21:56

Sally Ann O'Malley of Red Hat argues that running OpenClaw in containers with Podman and Kubernetes delivers secure, portable, and reproducible AI agent setups. She uses Podman secrets and OpenClaw's secret ref feature to manage API keys, ensuring secrets stay out of logs and configs. O'Malley demonstrates a local installer that spins up an OpenClaw container in two seconds and lifts the same workload to Kubernetes. She cites an Nvidia team of 10 engineers each running their own OpenClaw in Kubernetes for model evals, claiming it replaced the work of six people. Her vision is a team-standard containerized OpenClaw baseline with company-approved MCP servers and skills, enabling reproducible onboarding and personalization across an organization.

State of the Claw — Peter Steinberger

Apr 17, 2026 · 44:12

Peter Steinberger, creator of OpenClaw, presents a five-month update on the world's fastest-growing open-source project. He details the project's staggering growth—30,000 commits, nearly 2,000 contributors—and the immense security burden: 1,142 advisories (16.6 per day) with 99 critical, often AI-generated slop that demands human vetting. Steinberger refutes media fearmongering, citing how researchers ignore security docs to fabricate scary scenarios. He clarifies OpenAI did not buy OpenClaw; he joined the company while establishing the OpenClaw Foundation to remain vendor-neutral. He emphasizes the importance of local models for data sovereignty and describes his coding workflow of running 5-6 agent sessions simultaneously, iterating on taste and personality. Future visions include ubiquitous agents, 'Dreaming' for memory reconciliation, and modular plugins. For engineers, he champions taste, system design, and learning to say no.

Strategies for LLM Evals (GuideLLM, lm-eval-harness, OpenAI Evals Workshop) — Taylor Jordan Smith

Jul 27, 2025 · 32:28

Taylor Jordan Smith from Red Hat presents a hands-on workshop on evaluating large language models (LLMs) for production, using three open-source tools: GuideLLM for system performance benchmarks (latency, throughput), lm-eval-harness for factual accuracy via MMLU Pro, and promptfoo for safety and bias custom evaluations. He argues that traditional benchmarks are insufficient and advocates for a layered evaluation pyramid—starting with system performance, then factual accuracy, then safety/bias—taking an incremental approach similar to software testing (unit, integration, end-to-end). He demonstrates deploying an IBM Granite 2B model with vLLM on an L4 GPU, showing how to adjust input/output tokens for use cases like chatbots or RAG. The episode emphasizes that evaluations must be tailored to the specific system (RAG, agents, etc.) and continuously integrated into CI/CD pipelines to manage risk, cost, and reliability in production. Attendees gain actionable strategies for custom eval suites and human-in-the-loop feedback.