IDEAS, DECISIONS & LESSONS
Notes on AI, architecture and building useful products.
11 articles
20 Sep 2026 · 4 min read
architecture
Uber's fix for retry storms wasn't a smarter backoff algorithm. It was a header that tells every hop in a call chain whether an error actually belongs to it.
Read more19 Sep 2026 · 4 min read
ai
DoorDash ran 50 stale feature flags through a Sonnet-plus-Opus agent pipeline and published the numbers. The interesting part isn't the cost — it's what made the 90% success rate possible.
Read more19 Aug 2026 · 5 min read
agentic coding
If your team uses Claude Code for one task, Cursor for another, and Codex for a third, none of them know what the others just learned. I dug into Memmy and the cross-agent memory layer pattern, and what it actually takes to fix this in production.
Read more19 Aug 2026 · 6 min read
algorithms
I hosted and reviewed EinkChess, an open-source chess app built for Kindle e-readers. A look at how you write a minimax engine, an offline puzzle trainer, and a client-side app for a screen that punishes every repaint.
Read more19 Aug 2026 · 5 min read
agentic coding
xAI open-sourced Grok Build, a terminal coding agent powered by Grok 4.6 with subagents, plan mode, and worktree support. I tested it side by side with Claude Code on real refactoring work. Here's what actually differs.
Read more22 Jul 2026 · 7 min read
ai
OpenCode #1, Cursor #2, Claude Code #3 — but which AI coding tool is right for your team? A practical Tech Lead framework with 5 evaluation criteria, real trade-offs, and a recommendation matrix for startups vs enterprises.
Read more28 Jun 2026 · 6 min read
ai-cost
Most AI cost overruns aren't about model pricing — they're about bloated context windows. Here's the architecture that helped teams cut AI costs by 80% without sacrificing output quality.
Read more28 Jun 2026 · 8 min read
ai-agents
AWS, Microsoft, and Google are all rebuilding agent runtimes around the session — not the request. Here's what this architectural shift means for teams building production AI systems.
Read more11 May 2026 · 10 min read
ai
A Technical Lead's data-driven analysis of how vibe coding accelerates technical debt at 3x the normal rate, why 95% of developers feel productive while shipping worse code, and what rescue engineering looks like in 2026.
Read more
