writing · 70 essays

The archive

Essays on engineering leadership, the agentic SDLC, platform engineering, and enterprise AI — what actually constrains software delivery.

// featured · July 17, 2026

Everyone Knows You Never Rewrite

For twenty-six years, the full rewrite was the cardinal sin of software engineering. Then one engineer ported half a million lines of Bun from Zig to Rust in eleven days. The taboo was never about code. It was a price tag, and for systems whose intent lives in an executable oracle, the price just collapsed.

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agentic-sdlc

$ vinny init agentic-sdlc
→ spinning up reasoning loop
✓ spec generated · 217 lines
✓ tests scaffolded · 14 cases
⚠ coverage gap detected · branch /auth
→ prompting refinement
✓ branch coverage · 96%
// shipping behavior, not just code

July 13, 20269 min
Paying for Intelligence Twice★
Satya Nadella named a real problem: AI workflows generate valuable learning exhaust from proprietary context and corrections. He is right about the asset. My practitioner's edit is simple: own the learning loop, not necessarily the model.
AI EconomicsAI StrategyAgentic SDLC
July 6, 202611 min
Two Gates and a Night Shift★
My personal delivery pipeline runs on three Claude agents, three nested loops, and two explicit human approval gates. The gates sit where judgment is cheapest and most consequential, and the real bottleneck moved upstream to the clarity of the ask.
Agentic SDLCSpec-Driven DevelopmentEngineering Leadership
July 4, 20268 min
The Instrument and the Ledger★
In June I itemized the AI subsidy by hand. This month I built the instrument that does it for me. It took an afternoon, and it was built by the very thing it measures.
AI EconomicsFinOpsClaude Code
July 1, 20269 min
Barometer: I Chased a New Primitive. I Was Standing on It.★
I built a serverless internet health monitor because I wanted an excuse to learn Lambda MicroVMs. The better lesson was that Barometer did not need the newest primitive. It needed the boring, correct fit between the tool and the job.
AWSServerlessAgentic SDLC
June 28, 202612 min
Work Is Hard Enough★
Work is already hard. Leadership should remove the avoidable human drag: unclear decisions, unsafe disagreement, personal friction, and cultures where telling the truth costs too much.
Engineering LeadershipServant LeadershipTeam Culture
June 26, 202617 min
Still in the Code★
I lead engineering at a Fortune 100 company, and I still ship my own software. Not because leaders need to prove they can code, but because AI is changing the work faster than secondhand models can keep up.
Engineering LeadershipAI CodingSide Projects
June 22, 202614 min
Complexity Is Inevitable. Drag Is Optional.★
Complexity is inevitable in modern engineering. Drag is optional. The work of leadership is turning repeated friction into platforms, defaults, and systems that help teams move faster with trust intact.
Engineering LeadershipPlatform EngineeringCloud
June 18, 202621 min
Native Was the Long Way Around. The Stack Wasn't the Point.★
I rebuilt a working web app as native iOS and Mac software, not because native was magic, but because the discipline required to make it correct is the same discipline AI agents need to be useful.
iOSSwiftAI Coding
June 15, 202610 min
The Subsidy, Itemized★
Twenty-six days of Claude Code showed $2,556 of API-priced work against a $200 subscription. The lesson was not the total. It was cache behavior, model routing, and a government kill switch that landed in my usage chart. Value lives in verified outcomes, not tokens, and the work has to survive the stop.
AI EconomicsFinOpsClaude Code
June 14, 202617 min
Trust the Gate, Not the Actor
AI has made generation cheap. The durable advantage now belongs to teams that can encode judgment into gates that verify whether the work should ship.
Agentic SDLCEngineering LeadershipAI Strategy

featured

Everyone Knows You Never Rewrite

Paying for Intelligence Twice★

Two Gates and a Night Shift★

The Instrument and the Ledger★

Barometer: I Chased a New Primitive. I Was Standing on It.★

Work Is Hard Enough★

Still in the Code★

Complexity Is Inevitable. Drag Is Optional.★

Native Was the Long Way Around. The Stack Wasn't the Point.★

The Subsidy, Itemized★

Trust the Gate, Not the Actor