Ossama Elhakki — AI Engineer Blog

Ossama Elhakki — AI Engineer Blog https://ossamaelhakki.com Deep-dive articles on machine learning, computer vision, NLP, and AI automation by Ossama Elhakki. en-us ossamaelhakki@gmail.com (Ossama Elhakki) ossamaelhakki@gmail.com (Ossama Elhakki) Mon, 08 Jun 2026 10:00:04 GMT https://ossamaelhakki.com/og-image.png Ossama Elhakki Blog https://ossamaelhakki.com <![CDATA[Achieving AUC 0.9648 on IEEE-CIS Fraud Detection with LightGBM Stacking]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/lightgbm-fraud-detection-auc-0964 https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/lightgbm-fraud-detection-auc-0964 Tue, 15 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[XGBoost vs LightGBM: When to Use Each in Production]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/xgboost-vs-lightgbm-deep-comparison https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/xgboost-vs-lightgbm-deep-comparison Thu, 20 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Feature Engineering Playbook for Tabular ML Competitions]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/feature-engineering-tabular-ml https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/feature-engineering-tabular-ml Wed, 05 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[CatBoost's Secret Weapon: Ordered Target Encoding Explained]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/catboost-categorical-features-guide https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/catboost-categorical-features-guide Tue, 18 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Class Imbalance in Production: What Actually Works]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/imbalanced-classification-strategies https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/imbalanced-classification-strategies Sat, 01 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Optuna in Production: Smarter Hyperparameter Tuning]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/optuna-hyperparameter-tuning-guide https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/optuna-hyperparameter-tuning-guide Wed, 22 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[SHAP for Production ML: Explaining Models to Non-Technical Stakeholders]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/shap-model-explainability-production https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/shap-model-explainability-production Fri, 10 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Cross-Validation Strategies: Which One to Use and When]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/cross-validation-strategies-guide https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/cross-validation-strategies-guide Sun, 15 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Medical Image Segmentation with U-Net: Reaching Dice 0.7964]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/u-net-medical-segmentation-dice-0796 https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/u-net-medical-segmentation-dice-0796 Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[YOLOv8 Custom Training: From Dataset to Production API]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/yolov8-custom-object-detection https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/yolov8-custom-object-detection Wed, 12 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[ControlNet + Stable Diffusion: Production-Grade Image Generation]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/stable-diffusion-controlnet-workflow https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/stable-diffusion-controlnet-workflow Tue, 25 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Building a Transformer from Scratch in PyTorch]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/transformer-from-scratch-pytorch https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/transformer-from-scratch-pytorch Tue, 28 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[10 PyTorch Training Tricks That Cut My Training Time in Half]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/training-tricks-pytorch-production https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/training-tricks-pytorch-production Wed, 15 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Fine-Tuning BERT for Production NLP: A Battle-Tested Guide]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/bert-fine-tuning-production-nlp https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/bert-fine-tuning-production-nlp Fri, 28 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Building a Production RAG System with LangChain and Pinecone]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/rag-system-production-langchain https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/rag-system-production-langchain Thu, 10 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Arabic NLP in 2025: AraBERT, CAMeL Tools, and Production Pipelines]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/arabic-nlp-arabert-guide https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/arabic-nlp-arabert-guide Sat, 01 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Prompt Engineering Patterns That Actually Work in 2025]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/llm-prompt-engineering-guide https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/llm-prompt-engineering-guide Sun, 20 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Building a WhatsApp AI Sales Agent with n8n and Ollama]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/whatsapp-ai-agent-n8n-ollama https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/whatsapp-ai-agent-n8n-ollama Fri, 25 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[5 n8n AI Automation Workflows I've Built for Real Businesses]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/n8n-ai-automation-workflows-guide https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/n8n-ai-automation-workflows-guide Sat, 05 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Designing Multi-Agent AI Systems That Actually Work]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/multi-agent-system-design https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/multi-agent-system-design Sat, 15 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[MLOps Pipeline from Scratch: CI/CD for ML Models]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/mlops-pipeline-from-scratch https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/mlops-pipeline-from-scratch Sat, 22 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Detecting Model Drift in Production Before It Kills Your KPIs]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/model-drift-monitoring-production https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/model-drift-monitoring-production Mon, 10 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Deploying ML Models with FastAPI: A Production Checklist]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/fastapi-ml-deployment-guide https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/fastapi-ml-deployment-guide Thu, 30 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[My Kaggle Competition Strategy: From Bronze to Gold]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/kaggle-competition-strategy-guide https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/kaggle-competition-strategy-guide Thu, 20 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Time Series Forecasting at Scale: From ARIMA to LightGBM]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/time-series-forecasting-production https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/time-series-forecasting-production Sun, 05 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[DQN from Scratch: Teaching an Agent to Play Snake]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/reinforcement-learning-dqn-from-scratch https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/reinforcement-learning-dqn-from-scratch Sat, 18 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Face Recognition in Production with InsightFace]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/face-recognition-production-insightface https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/face-recognition-production-insightface Fri, 20 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Image Classification with EfficientNet: Transfer Learning Best Practices]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/image-classification-efficientnet-guide https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/image-classification-efficientnet-guide Thu, 05 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Training GANs That Don't Collapse: Lessons from DCGAN to StyleGAN]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/gan-image-generation-dcgan https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/gan-image-generation-dcgan Wed, 20 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Pandas at Scale: 10 Optimizations for Large DataFrames]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/pandas-performance-optimization https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/pandas-performance-optimization Sat, 28 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[PostgreSQL as a Feature Store: Design Patterns for ML Pipelines]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/postgresql-ml-pipeline-design https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/postgresql-ml-pipeline-design Fri, 15 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[NEAT Algorithm: Evolving Neural Networks Without Backprop]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/neat-neuroevolution-tutorial https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/neat-neuroevolution-tutorial Thu, 28 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Monte Carlo Tree Search: The Algorithm Behind AlphaGo]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/monte-carlo-tree-search-explained https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/monte-carlo-tree-search-explained Sun, 10 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Genetic Algorithms for Real-World Optimization Problems]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/genetic-algorithms-optimization https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/genetic-algorithms-optimization Fri, 25 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Running LLMs Locally with Ollama: A Production Guide]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/llm-local-deployment-ollama https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/llm-local-deployment-ollama Fri, 18 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Vector Database Showdown 2025: Pinecone vs Weaviate vs Qdrant vs Chroma]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/vector-databases-comparison-2025 https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/vector-databases-comparison-2025 Fri, 14 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Docker for ML: Reproducible Environments and Multi-Stage Builds]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/docker-ml-workflows-best-practices https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/docker-ml-workflows-best-practices Wed, 08 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Scikit-learn Pipelines: The Right Way to Build ML Workflows]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/sklearn-pipeline-best-practices https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/sklearn-pipeline-best-practices Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Text Embedding Models in 2025: Which to Use for RAG?]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/embedding-models-comparison https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/embedding-models-comparison Sat, 08 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Anomaly Detection with Autoencoders: Better Than Rules, Cheaper Than Labels]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/anomaly-detection-autoencoder https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/anomaly-detection-autoencoder Thu, 12 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[GPU Training Optimization: Getting the Most from Your Hardware]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/gpu-training-optimization https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/gpu-training-optimization Tue, 15 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Sentiment Analysis for Arabic Text: BERT vs Traditional ML]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/sentiment-analysis-production-arabic https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/sentiment-analysis-production-arabic Sat, 25 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Data Augmentation Strategies When You Have < 1000 Samples]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/data-augmentation-small-datasets https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/data-augmentation-small-datasets Tue, 01 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[ML System Design Interview: A Framework That Works]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/ml-system-design-interview https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/ml-system-design-interview Wed, 05 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[NLP Text Preprocessing: The Complete Guide for 2025]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/nlp-text-preprocessing-complete-guide https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/nlp-text-preprocessing-complete-guide Fri, 01 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Building a Recommendation System: From Collaborative Filtering to Neural CF]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/recommendation-system-collaborative-filtering https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/recommendation-system-collaborative-filtering Thu, 10 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Production Speech-to-Text with Whisper: Moroccan Arabic Dialect Support]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/speech-to-text-whisper-production https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/speech-to-text-whisper-production Sun, 12 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT <![CDATA[Making Models 10x Smaller: Quantization, Pruning, and Knowledge Distillation]]> https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/model-compression-quantization-pruning https://ossamaelhakki.com/en/blog/model-compression-quantization-pruning Fri, 20 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT