The studio journal

Insights from the workshop

I write to think clearly. Most of what is here started as a note to myself after a hard week of shipping. If a piece survives a few months without me wanting to delete it, it ends up on this page. Expect opinions on architecture, AI in production, and the boring process work that quietly decides whether a product ships.

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essays12 min

Building in Public: An Honest Take

The uncomfortable truths about transparency as a strategy

Building in public has become a movement, but rarely do we discuss its downsides. Here's what I've learned about when transparency helps, when it hurts, and how to navigate the performative pressure.

building-in-publicstrategy

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essays15 min

Taste in Engineering

The ineffable quality that separates good from great

We talk about technical skill, but rarely about taste. What makes some engineers consistently make better decisions? An exploration of the aesthetic dimension of software engineering.

engineeringcraft

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essays18 min

AI Won't Replace Engineers (But It Will Change Us)

A nuanced take on AI and the future of software development

Neither doomer nor hype-a realistic assessment of how AI is changing software engineering based on daily experience building AI systems and using AI tools.

aifuture-of-work

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90 articles

essays·12 min·Mar 15, 2024

Building in Public: An Honest Take

Building in public has become a movement, but rarely do we discuss its downsides. Here's what I've learned about when transparency helps, when it hurts, and how to navigate the performative pressure.

building-in-publicstrategyauthenticity

essays·15 min·Feb 28, 2024

Taste in Engineering

We talk about technical skill, but rarely about taste. What makes some engineers consistently make better decisions? An exploration of the aesthetic dimension of software engineering.

engineeringcraftdecision-making

essays·18 min·Feb 10, 2024

AI Won't Replace Engineers (But It Will Change Us)

Neither doomer nor hype-a realistic assessment of how AI is changing software engineering based on daily experience building AI systems and using AI tools.

aifuture-of-workengineering

essays·14 min·Jan 20, 2024

The Reality of Indie Consulting

An honest retrospective on building an independent consulting practice-the freedom, the uncertainty, and the unexpected challenges.

consultingcareerindependence

essays·11 min·Jan 5, 2024

The Senior Engineer Path (That Isn't Management)

You don't have to become a manager to grow your career. Here's a framework for senior IC growth that I've used and advised others on.

careerengineeringleadership

essays·13 min·Dec 15, 2023

Technical Debt Isn't Real

The debt metaphor has outlived its usefulness. Here's why I think we need a new framework for thinking about software entropy and decision consequences.

engineeringmetaphorsdecision-making

essays·16 min·Nov 28, 2023

Mistakes I Made as a First-Time Startup CTO

A candid look at the technical and leadership mistakes I made leading engineering at my first startup, and what I'd do differently.

startupleadershipmistakes

essays·10 min·Nov 10, 2023

Complexity Is the Enemy

A meditation on complexity, simplicity, and why the most impactful engineering often involves removing things rather than adding them.

architecturesimplicityengineering

technical·25 min·Mar 1, 2024

Building Production RAG Systems

RAG looks simple in demos but is notoriously hard in production. Here's a comprehensive guide to building RAG systems that actually work, based on real deployment experience.

airagllm

technical·20 min·Feb 15, 2024

An LLM Evaluation Framework That Works

How to systematically evaluate LLM applications with a practical framework covering automated metrics, human evaluation, and continuous monitoring.

aillmevaluation

technical·18 min·Jan 25, 2024

Prompt Engineering for Production

Production prompts need to be reliable, testable, and maintainable. Here's how to treat prompts as code with proper engineering practices.

aiprompt-engineeringproduction

technical·22 min·Jan 10, 2024

Serverless at Scale: Patterns and Pitfalls

Serverless is powerful but has sharp edges at scale. Learn the patterns that work, the antipatterns to avoid, and when to choose different architectures.

serverlessarchitectureaws

technical·28 min·Dec 20, 2023

Next.js Performance Deep Dive

A comprehensive guide to making Next.js applications blazingly fast, covering server components, streaming, caching, and real-world optimization strategies.

nextjsperformancereact

technical·20 min·Dec 5, 2023

PostgreSQL for (Almost) Everything

PostgreSQL can do more than you think-queues, full-text search, JSON, geospatial, and more. Here's when to lean into Postgres and when to reach for specialized tools.

postgresqldatabasearchitecture

technical·24 min·Nov 20, 2023

Real-Time Architecture Patterns

A practical guide to building real-time features-from simple presence indicators to complex multiplayer experiences.

real-timewebsocketsarchitecture

technical·19 min·Nov 5, 2023

TypeScript Patterns for Production

Advanced TypeScript patterns that make your codebase more maintainable-discriminated unions, branded types, type guards, and more.

typescriptpatternsengineering

guides·16 min·Feb 20, 2024

Choosing a Tech Stack for Your Startup

There's no universal 'best' stack. Here's a framework for making technology choices based on your specific constraints, team, and stage.

startuparchitecturedecision-making

guides·14 min·Feb 5, 2024

Making Your First Engineering Hire

Your first engineering hire sets the technical culture. Here's how to write the role, source candidates, evaluate fit, and set them up for success.

hiringstartupleadership

guides·18 min·Jan 15, 2024

Technical Interviews: A Hiring Manager's Guide

Most technical interviews are broken. Here's how to design interviews that actually predict job performance while respecting candidates' time.

hiringinterviewsleadership

guides·12 min·Dec 28, 2023

Writing Architecture Decision Records

ADRs are the most underrated documentation practice. Here's how to write them well and integrate them into your development process.

architecturedocumentationprocess

guides·22 min·Dec 10, 2023

API Design Principles

A comprehensive guide to API design-from URL structure to error handling to versioning strategies that age well.

apidesigndeveloper-experience

guides·16 min·Nov 25, 2023

Building an Incident Response Playbook

How to prepare for incidents, respond effectively, and learn from failures. A practical guide to incident management for growing teams.

operationsincidentsreliability

notes·6 min·Mar 10, 2024

Cursor vs Copilot in 2024

Quick thoughts on AI coding assistants after using both extensively. Which is better? (Spoiler: it depends.)

aitoolsproductivity

notes·5 min·Feb 25, 2024

My Indie Hacker Stack for 2024

A quick overview of my current stack for building and shipping quickly as a solo developer.

toolsstackindie

notes·7 min·Jan 30, 2024

React Server Components Mental Model

The mental model that made React Server Components click for me after months of confusion.

reactrscmental-models

notes·8 min·Jan 8, 2024

Books That Shaped My Engineering

The technical and non-technical books that most influenced how I think about building software.

bookslearningcareer

notes·5 min·Dec 18, 2023

Why I Still Use Tailwind

Brief thoughts on why Tailwind continues to be my default choice for styling, and the critiques I think are valid.

csstailwindtooling

playbooks·35 min·Mar 5, 2024

The MVP Development Playbook

A complete playbook for building and launching an MVP quickly without sacrificing the foundation for future growth.

mvpstartupprocess

playbooks·40 min·Jan 22, 2024

The Technical Due Diligence Playbook

A structured approach to technical due diligence for M&A, investment, or partnership decisions.

due-diligenceevaluationm&a

playbooks·45 min·Dec 1, 2023

The Legacy Modernization Playbook

A pragmatic approach to modernizing legacy systems incrementally while delivering business value along the way.

legacymodernizationarchitecture

essays·9 min·Apr 28, 2026

What I Actually Learned Leaving the Bank

Independent work isn't 'more freedom' the way Twitter sells it. It's a different kind of constraint. Here's what shifted when I left a global bank to build my own studio.

careerfreelanceindependent

technical·11 min·Apr 22, 2026

Claude Opus 4.7 with 1M Context: What Actually Changes

1M tokens isn't a marketing number - it changes how you architect retrieval. My RAG pipeline got 3x simpler and 2x more accurate. The cost math also shifted in interesting ways.

aiclaudeanthropic

technical·10 min·Apr 15, 2026

Next.js 16 in Production: A Three-Month Field Report

I shipped three production sites on Next.js 16 in Q1 2026. Build times dropped, hydration mismatches got better, and I finally stopped hating the App Router.

nextjsreactvercel

essays·8 min·Apr 8, 2026

"RAG is Dead" - and Why That's Half True

Every six months someone declares RAG dead. They're wrong, but the way RAG is implemented in most production systems IS dead. Here's the difference.

airagllm

technical·12 min·Apr 2, 2026

Spring Boot 3.2 on GraalVM: When It's Worth It

I shipped a Spring Boot service compiled to a native image at a Tier-1 bank. Cold-start went from 8 seconds to 80 milliseconds. The build time went from 30 seconds to 6 minutes. Whether that's a win depends entirely on your shape of load.

javaspring-bootgraalvm

technical·10 min·Mar 26, 2026

Kafka vs. EventBridge vs. Pub/Sub: A Practical Comparison

Three years ago every event-driven system used Kafka. Today the answer is more nuanced. Cloud-native event buses have closed the gap on most workloads, but Kafka still wins for the workloads that matter.

kafkaawsgcp

essays·13 min·Mar 20, 2026

AI Agents in Production: What 18 Months Taught Me

I've shipped four agent-based features in production since late 2024. Three of them are still running. The one that isn't taught me the most.

aiagentsllm

technical·9 min·Mar 12, 2026

Postgres as Everything: The 2026 Reality

Vector search? Postgres has pgvector. Job queue? Postgres + SKIP LOCKED. Cache? Postgres unlogged tables. Search? Postgres FTS. The boring database keeps eating the modern stack.

postgresdatabasearchitecture

guides·7 min·Mar 4, 2026

The 1099 Engineer's Finance Stack

Nobody warns you about the operational overhead of independent work. Invoicing, taxes, bookkeeping, contracts, insurance - the meta-work eats your week if you don't automate. This is what I run.

freelanceindependentbusiness

essays·10 min·Feb 25, 2026

OpenAI vs. Anthropic in 2026: My Working Mental Model

After two years of running both providers in production, I have a clear picture of where each wins. The frontier-model gap is closer than it was, but the products around the models are genuinely different.

openaianthropicclaude

technical·8 min·Feb 18, 2026

Why MCP Is the Quiet Revolution Nobody's Talking About

MCP standardizes how AI clients connect to data sources and tools. It's been shipping for over a year. Here's why it matters more than the next benchmark bump.

mcpaitooling

technical·7 min·Feb 4, 2026

Vercel Fluid Compute: Six Months of Real Use

Fluid compute changes the cost model for serverless functions that mostly wait on databases or AI APIs. I've been running production workloads on it. Here's what's true.

vercelserverlesscost

essays·9 min·Jan 22, 2026

Stop Writing Microservices

Microservices are the wrong default for most companies. The architecture I keep coming back to is the modular monolith - the same Spring Boot codebase, organized strictly along domain boundaries, deployed as one.

architecturemicroservicesmonolith

technical·10 min·Dec 18, 2025

AI Coding Tools at the End of 2025: A Working Engineer's Verdict

I've spent more time with AI coding tools in 2025 than I have with any IDE in my career. The differences between tools are significant and often misreported. Here's how I actually use each.

aicodingcursor

technical·12 min·Nov 30, 2025

Fintech Architecture Patterns That Actually Survive Regulators

Fintech architecture content online is mostly written by people who've never been audited. Here's what regulators actually ask about and how I architect to pass.

fintecharchitecturecompliance

technical·8 min·Nov 12, 2025

Kubernetes: When It's the Right Choice (And When You're Just LARPing)

Kubernetes is a phenomenal tool for the right problem. It is also, in my experience, the most over-adopted tool in our industry. Here's a sharper decision framework.

kubernetesinfrastructuredevops

technical·9 min·Oct 28, 2025

React Server Components in 2025: The Honest Take

React Server Components are now the default in Next.js. The mental model is genuinely different from anything React had before. Here's what I've learned shipping them.

reactnextjsrsc

guides·8 min·Oct 8, 2025

The Observability Stack I Run in 2025

For early-stage companies, modern observability is over-priced for what most teams need. Here's a leaner stack that gets 90% of the value at 20% of the cost.

observabilitymonitoringdevops

guides·9 min·Sep 19, 2025

Hiring Your First Engineer as a Founder

Most founders hire their first engineer wrong. They optimize for skill match instead of context-handling. Here's the framework I walk founders through.

hiringstartupsfounders

technical·11 min·Aug 30, 2025

How I Cut Chargeback Fraud 73% on a Fintech Project

Three months on a fintech engagement, three rule-engine refactors, and a small AI scoring layer. Here's how the numbers actually moved.

fintechfraudai

essays·7 min·Aug 4, 2025

Anthropic's MCP Launch: Five Takeaways from a Skeptic

When Anthropic announced the Model Context Protocol in late 2024, I thought it was a Claude-specific play. A year of using it for client work changed my mind.

mcpanthropicai

technical·8 min·Jul 15, 2025

Edge Databases: Where the Hype Meets Reality

Edge databases promise low latency from anywhere. The reality is more nuanced. Here's where they actually win and where they cost more than they save.

databaseedgeperformance

essays·9 min·Jun 30, 2025

AI Summer 2025: What Actually Progressed

Mid-year stocktake on AI capabilities, costs, tools, and architectures. The real progress isn't where the headlines are.

aiindustrytrends

essays·8 min·May 22, 2025

Fractional CTO: When the Model Actually Works

Fractional CTO has become a buzzword. Most arrangements fail because nobody defined what 'fractional' means. Here's the version that actually delivers.

fractional-ctofreelanceadvisory

technical·8 min·Apr 30, 2025

Groq vs. OpenAI vs. Anthropic for Inference: Speed, Cost, and Quality

Latency-sensitive workloads need Groq. Frontier capability needs Anthropic or OpenAI. Cost-sensitive workloads have a third answer. I've benchmarked all three.

aigroqinference

technical·9 min·Mar 15, 2025

Spring Boot 3.2: The Features I Actually Use

Spring Boot 3.2 shipped a lot. Most teams are using maybe 20% of it. Here's the 20% that's worth knowing about.

javaspring-bootbackend

essays·7 min·Feb 28, 2025

The End of Frontend Frameworks (Sort Of)

Nobody's debating React vs Vue vs Svelte anymore. The action moved to: which runtime, which deployment model, which AI integration. Here's what changed.

frontendreactjavascript

technical·8 min·Feb 12, 2025

DeepSeek, Llama, Qwen - When Open Models Win

Open-weights models closed enough of the gap with frontier closed-source models that real production workloads now make sense on them. Here's where I deploy them.

aiopen-sourcedeepseek

technical·6 min·Jan 22, 2025

Cursor vs. Claude Code: How I Decide

Cursor and Claude Code overlap but aren't substitutes. After months of using both, I have a clear sense of when each wins.

aicursorclaude-code

essays·8 min·Dec 30, 2024

Shipping for Two Fractional-CTO Clients in 2024: What I Learned

Two clients, very different stacks, very different problems, lots of overlap in what failure modes I saw. Year-end retrospective.

fractional-ctoyear-in-reviewconsulting

technical·7 min·Dec 15, 2024

The Real Cost of Running Claude in Production

I track every penny of Claude API spend across my projects. Here's the breakdown of what costs what, and where the savings are.

claudeanthropiccost

guides·8 min·Nov 26, 2024

Remote Team Rituals That Actually Work

Most remote-team advice is generic. After running engineering pods at a bank, a bank, and now my own clients across timezones, I have stronger opinions about what works.

remoteteamleadership

technical·7 min·Nov 8, 2024

Vector Databases: The 2024 Shakeout

The vector DB market exploded in 2023, consolidated in 2024. Here's where each player stands and which one I'd pick for what.

vector-databaseaipinecone

guides·7 min·Oct 22, 2024

Instrumentation Before Optimization

Half the projects I get pulled into are 'we need to optimize X.' Half of those don't actually have data showing X is the bottleneck. Instrumentation is the first move.

performanceobservabilityengineering

guides·7 min·Oct 4, 2024

The Zero-to-Launch Stack I Use in 2024

Same client request comes up multiple times a year. Here's the stack I use for fast, defensible MVPs.

mvpstackstartup

playbooks·11 min·Sep 15, 2024

Monolith to Microservices: When (and How) to Make the Move

Don't do a big-bang migration. Don't migrate for the wrong reasons. Don't migrate without instrumentation. Here's the playbook that actually ships.

microservicesmonolithmigration

essays·7 min·Aug 28, 2024

I Stopped Using ORMs (Mostly)

ORMs feel productive in the early days and become a tax later. Here's when I still reach for one and when I write SQL directly.

databaseormsql

essays·9 min·Aug 12, 2024

What I Learned From My First Production Incident

An anonymized retrospective on the first big incident I drove. The technical fix mattered less than the communication and rollback discipline.

incidentoperationslessons

essays·8 min·Jul 30, 2024

Why Banks Pay So Much for Software (and Why It's Justified)

I spent five years inside large banks. People always asked why their software costs so much. The answer surprised me - most of it is fundamentally well-spent.

bankingfintechengineering-management

guides·8 min·Jul 15, 2024

AI Product Design Patterns That Don't Suck

Six patterns I use when integrating AI into existing products. The ones that work feel like a feature; the ones that don't feel like a chatbot bolted on the side.

aiproductux

essays·5 min·Jun 25, 2024

Linear vs. Jira in 2024

I've watched teams improve dramatically just by switching their issue tracker. Linear vs. Jira is one of those decisions that's actually about culture, not features.

toolslinearjira

technical·7 min·Jun 8, 2024

The React 19 Upgrade Experience

React 19 brought useTransition improvements, the new use() hook, and the Activity component. The migration was smoother than I feared. Here's the breakdown.

reactfrontend

essays·6 min·May 20, 2024

Writing as a Developer Marketing Channel

Most developer marketing advice is bad. Writing isn't bad. Here's why technical writing converts better than 'thought leadership.'

marketingwritingfreelance

essays·8 min·May 2, 2024

When to Go Independent

Most engineers thinking about going independent overestimate the risk. A smaller number underestimate it. Here's a more honest decision framework.

careerfreelanceindependent

essays·6 min·Apr 18, 2024

The Debugging Mindset

Debugging is half the job. It's also the half nobody teaches. Here's the mental model that distinguishes engineers who can debug anything from engineers who can't.

debuggingengineeringcraft

essays·9 min·Apr 18, 2024

What I Charge and Why

I get the pricing question every week, and most founders are too polite to ask it directly. Here's exactly what I charge, what I won't take below, and why the math has to work that way.

pricingfreelanceconsulting

guides·10 min·Jun 4, 2024

The Database Decision Tree I Use in 2026

Founders ask me which database to pick more than any other architectural question. I've codified the decision into a tree I actually use on calls. Here it is.

postgresdatabasesarchitecture

technical·8 min·Jul 22, 2024

Stop Using JWT for Sessions

JWTs are an excellent token format and a terrible session mechanism. The pattern of stuffing user state in a JWT and skipping the session table is one of the most common security antipatterns I see in startup code.

securityauthjwt

essays·10 min·Sep 10, 2024

What Anthropic Got Right About AI Safety That OpenAI Got Wrong

Safety isn't a marketing position. It's a series of small product decisions that compound. After two years of building on both Claude and GPT, the difference in how each lab thinks shows up in the failure modes I see in production.

aianthropicopenai

technical·12 min·Nov 12, 2024

Building a SaaS Backend in Java in 2026

Most YC startups pick Node or Go for the backend. The ones I see hitting Series A and beyond often regret it. Here's the Java stack I'd build a SaaS on today, and why.

javaspring-bootsaas

technical·11 min·Dec 8, 2024

Reading Stripe's Source Code: 7 Patterns Worth Stealing

Stripe doesn't open source the core. They do open source the SDKs, the CLI, and a half dozen tools that are, individually, the cleanest production code I've read in years. These are the patterns I now use myself.

stripecode-qualitypatterns

essays·10 min·Jan 15, 2025

The Three Architectures I See Failing in 2026

I do architecture audits as a service. I've now done enough to see the same failure patterns across very different companies. These are the three I'd bet against this year.

architectureanti-patternsaudit

essays·8 min·Feb 26, 2025

When to Choose Boring Technology

Boring technology is a strategy, not an aesthetic. Twelve years after Dan McKinley's original essay, the principle has held up better than almost any other piece of architectural advice I know.

architectureengineering-principlesboring-tech

playbooks·11 min·Apr 8, 2025

The Founder's Guide to Technical Due Diligence

When a VC writes a check, they often hire someone like me to spend two days inside your codebase. This is what we look at, what gets a green light, and what gets a deal killed.

due-diligencefundraisingfounders

technical·9 min·May 22, 2025

Why I Stopped Writing GraphQL

I was a GraphQL believer for years. Five years of production experience later, I've stopped reaching for it. The trade-offs that looked great on paper haven't held up in maintenance.

graphqlrestapi-design

technical·10 min·Jul 4, 2025

Anthropic Computer Use: The Quietly Transformative API

Anthropic shipped computer use as a beta and the discourse moved on after a week. I've been building with it for months. It is, in my opinion, the most underestimated API release of the last two years.

anthropicclaudeagents

playbooks·12 min·Aug 19, 2025

How I Run Production Postgres at Scale

Postgres at low scale is delightful. Postgres at scale requires real operational discipline. This is the playbook I use, distilled from running it at a Tier-1 bank, a bank, and now for fintech clients.

postgresoperationsdatabase

playbooks·8 min·Sep 30, 2025

The 30-Day Architecture Audit (And What It Costs)

I run architecture audits for funded startups and growth-stage companies. This is the public version of the engagement: scope, deliverables, price, and the kind of findings that come out of a typical audit.

auditarchitectureconsulting

technical·11 min·Nov 14, 2025

AI Code Review: Cursor, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot Reviewed

Three of the leading AI coding tools have very different strengths. I've spent enough time in each to have opinions worth recording. This is the working comparison I share with clients.

aiclaude-codecursor

essays·7 min·Feb 9, 2026

Why I Stopped Saying 'Cloud Native'

Cloud native used to mean something specific. After a decade of dilution, the term means whatever the speaker wants it to mean. I've stopped using it, and I think you should too.

architecturelanguageindustry

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