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start here · curated reading paths

Where to begin

I write about the intersection of engineering leadership, platform strategy, enterprise AI, and hands-on software building. Here is where to start depending on why you showed up.

01

For engineering leaders

Leading teams, creating clarity, and navigating change — without pretending every tool is magic.

5 essays · 60 min
  1. 01

    The Bottleneck Is Never the Stack

    engineering-leadership · spec-driven-development · ai-strategy

    12 min
  2. 02

    The Frame Is the Bottleneck

    ai-strategy · ai-coding · learning

    11 min
  3. 03

    The AI Operating Ledger

    engineering-leadership · ai-strategy · agentic-sdlc

    11 min
  4. 04

    Your First AI Reorg Should Be the Work, Not the People

    engineering-leadership · ai-strategy · agentic-sdlc

    12 min
  5. 05

    Complexity Is Inevitable. Drag Is Optional.

    engineering-leadership · platform-engineering · cloud

    14 min
02

For builders experimenting with AI

The hands-on side of AI-assisted development, local models, and modern software workflows.

5 essays · 86 min
  1. 01

    The Agentic SDLC: Uniting the AI Tool Sprawl

    ai-strategy · ai-coding · agentic-sdlc

    18 min
  2. 02

    The Spec Is the Product

    spec-driven-development · platform-engineering · engineering-leadership

    11 min
  3. 03

    Spec, Standards, Specialists: How I Actually Build with AI

    ai-coding · engineering-leadership · claude-code

    26 min
  4. 04

    From Copy-Paste to Skill: What Thousands of AI Coding Sessions Taught Me About Guardrails

    claude-code · genai · software-engineering

    10 min
  5. 05

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

    ios · ai-coding · architecture

    21 min
03

For platform and cloud leaders

Platform engineering, DevOps operating models, developer experience, and the guardrails that actually ship.

5 essays · 53 min
  1. 01

    Building Cloud From Zero: Five Decisions That Compounded and Three I’d Redo

    cloud · platform-engineering · engineering-leadership

    16 min
  2. 02

    Claude Code Is a Build System, Not a Chatbot

    ai-coding · engineering-leadership · claude-code

    19 min
  3. 03

    The Dark Factory Model for AI-Driven Software Development

    genai · agentic-sdlc · software-engineering

    6 min
  4. 04

    Pipeline-First Is Not a DevOps Initiative - It's a Culture Shift.

    platform-engineering · engineering-leadership · security

    7 min
  5. 05

    The Rise of MCP Servers: Why Every Developer Will Have a Personal AI Toolchain

    open-source · software-engineering · genai

    5 min
04

For people who want to understand how I lead

How I think about work, teams, and staying close to the craft when AI is the new collaborator and the craft keeps shifting underneath us. Pair this path with the User Guide linked below.

5 essays · 43 min
  1. 01

    The Bottleneck Is Never the Stack

    engineering-leadership · spec-driven-development · ai-strategy

    12 min
  2. 02

    Building Cloud From Zero: Five Decisions That Compounded and Three I’d Redo

    cloud · platform-engineering · engineering-leadership

    16 min
  3. 03

    Pipeline-First Is Not a DevOps Initiative - It's a Culture Shift.

    platform-engineering · engineering-leadership · security

    7 min
  4. 04

    Yesterday's Feature Is Today's Bug

    engineering-leadership · software-engineering

    5 min
  5. 05

    Getting Better at Getting Better in 2026

    engineering-leadership · software-engineering · learning

    3 min

read one argument end to end

Follow a series

The paths above sort by role. The essay series sort by argument: each one runs several essays in the order the argument builds, not the order the calendar shipped them.

  1. 01

    The Agentic SDLC

    7 essays in reading order

  2. 02

    The AI Ledger

    6 essays in reading order

  3. 03

    Rewrites, Repriced

    3 essays in reading order

  4. 04

    The Human Bargain

    6 essays in reading order

All series

next step

Keep in touch

The best way to follow along is the blog, RSS, or LinkedIn. I write when I have something useful to say, which is better than writing because the algorithm looked hungry.

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