2025 year in review

2025 was an eventful year of progress. I improved my health, had some pleasant career surprises, and my wife and I took time off for two vacations.

Previous years: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020

Review of my 2025 goals

✅ Write 6 concise excerpts: Before 2023, most of my technical writing focused on RecSys. In 2023 – 2024, it shifts towards implementing the LLM. In 2025, I worked to bridge these two interests, starting with a deeper Improving research and discovery in the era of LLMAnd then follow a walkthrough on finetuning LLM-RECSIS hybrid for steerable RECS with semantic ID.The deep dive was well received and led to an invitation to host the AI ​​Engineer World Fair First LLM × Recsis Track,

Other key topics for 2025 were assessment – ​​an area where we still have a lot to learn and do as an industry – as well as general leadership and writing advice. Here are the six pieces:

✅ Prototype 4 Apps:one of my all time favorites AI Reading Club (ARC; how it is created). inspired by Karpathy’s tweetI created ARC to help people read more. I was not satisfied with existing solutions, such as Uploading PDF to chatbotBecause I felt they distracted from the experience of reading the book. Creating ARC gave me the opportunity to design my ideal reading experience. And now, this is Available on Kindle iOS app,

Another favorite was the training of an LLM-RECISIS hybrid for recommendations operable with Semantic ID. I started this with the hope that it would happen No work, and was amazed when the model could seamlessly return recommendations based on natural language and/or item ID input. I still remember the “mind-blowing” moment of watching the model being trained: given an input Zelda game (on Nintendo) and a request to filter for similar games on Xbox, it was able to recommend three action-adventures of a similar genre to Zelda on Xbox.

Other smaller prototypes include building sub-agent capabilities into Q-CLI (before they were available anywhere) and a stock analysis app For my family.

✅ Health: I started running 5km weekly in July. Although I had tried to do this before, I was never consistent. Sticking to it led to significant improvements in my resting heart rate and VO2 max, as measured by my Apple Watch. Looking at the data for 2023-2025, I can see small but gradual improvements, and my goal is to continue progress next year.

Resting Heart Rate by 2023 – 2025

V02 max 2023 – 2025

❌ Snowboarding (Run Black in 2026): This goal fell short because I would have to miss the current season due to surgery. Still, my wife and I are happy with the progress we’ve made at the beginning of the year (at Hakuba) and look forward to hitting the slopes next season.

Health: Braces and jaw surgery

To correct my bite and keep my molars from grinding prematurely, I started wearing braces in February and had jaw surgery in late November. I adapted to the braces more easily than expected, and am now in my third week of recovery from surgery.

I was promoted to Principal Applied Scientist and am officially enjoying the increased scope and learning that comes with it. I wrote this to share what I have learned so far from role models and gurus. Separately, my O1 visa also got approved.

Travel: Hakuba and Las Vegas

My wife and I aim to travel at least once a year, ideally twice if possible. Our two trips this year were to Hakuba (a snow resort town, less known than Niseko) and my first trip to Las Vegas. The snowboarding and food at Hakuba were some of the best I’ve experienced, and I now have a new life goal to visit at least once a year, if time and budget allow. For Vegas, my top recommendations are Antelope Canyon, seeing a show at The Sphere, and the Bellagio fountains (imagine the mechanical engineering involved in 1998!).

Site statistics for 2025

Here are the top 20 most interacted with pieces on my site.

Top 20 Most Interacted Pieces in 2025

And here are the Google search metrics. While impressions increased from 1.97M to 3.39M (+71% YOY), clicks decreased from 56.5k to 42.2k (-25% YOY). As a result, CTR dropped from 2.9% to 1.2%, despite the average position increasing from 24.6 to 17.7. I’m not exactly sure what causes this deviation. Perhaps Google’s AI observations or agentic traffic are increasing impressions without increasing associated clicks.

Find traffic and trends in 2025

target for 2026

I am aiming for the same by 2025. Given my increased official scope at work I find myself rushing to complete the first two, and I want the last two to solidify into lifelong habits.

• 6 write a summary
• Prototype 4 Apps Publicly
• Health: Weekly 5km run + weights + healthy diet
• snowboarding:Try Black Run

If you found it useful, please cite this article as:

Yan, Ziyu. (December 2025). 2025 year under review. eugeneyan.com. https://eugeneyan.com/writing/2025-review/.

Or

@article{yan20252025review,
  title   = {2025 Year in Review},
  author  = {Yan, Ziyou},
  journal = {eugeneyan.com},
  year    = {2025},
  month   = {Dec},
  url     = {https://eugeneyan.com/writing/2025-review/}
}

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