Field notes
Practitioner essays on building production software with AI agents.
Operator-grade reports on the systems, decisions, and economics of shipping software with AI — what worked, what failed, and what changed.
Articles
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Why FDE Works: The Same Reason Consultants Work
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗The irony is familiar: you debate a $400 model bill, approve a $180,000 SOW, and pay an outsider to say what your own engineers already told you.
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First Principles for AI-Native Engineering Execution (For CxOs)
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗The first principles behind agent-driven development, distilled from our published body of work into a clear, executive guide for decisions, governance, talent, and operating cadence.
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Token Economics Is the Wrong Spreadsheet
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗Three times a week now an engineering leader I respect tells me their CFO wants them to justify the ROI on AI tokens. The question itself is the part I am puzzled by. A token is a raw material, the way steel is a raw material at a foundry. Nobody audits the flour invoice at the bakery. The question is not a token question. It is a measurement question, and it is being asked on the wrong floor of the building.
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What Got You Here Won’t Keep You Here: A Letter to Technology Executives
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗Technology executives: the skills that got you here won’t keep you here. A frank letter about adapting your leadership for the AI-native era.
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Two Engineers. One Year. More Output Than Ten.
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗Nathan joined a scale-up as CTO with a mandate to hire ten engineers. He hired zero. Twelve months later, he and one existing associate engineer had decomposed the monolith, automated deployments, and outshipped the original plan.
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You Cannot Read Yourself Into AI-SDLC Literacy
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗Reading about AI won’t make you AI-literate. Only hands-on building will develop the intuition you need to lead. Start tonight.
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It’s Okay to Waste Tons of Money with Bad Consulting Partners, but Tokens Are Too Much Money?
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗Before finance audits token spend, audit the expenses that somehow escaped fiscal responsibility: offshore teams, staff augmentation, systems integrators, consulting partners, Scrum layers, agile coaches, planning ceremonies, and delivery management. How much did they actually cost, and what success rate did they produce?
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Your Engineering Team Ships in 28 Days. Ten of Those Days Are Work. The Other Eighteen Are a Leadership Problem.
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗Your engineering team reports a 30% velocity improvement from AI tooling. Your CFO sees 5% on the P&L. The gap, millions per year, is sitting in your value stream, visible to anyone who picks up a marker. A whiteboard and a Tuesday afternoon will show you exactly where the money goes.
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The 2028 Problem You’re Creating in 2025
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗Your 2025 AI decisions shape your 2028 reality. Learn why waiting for clarity is the riskiest strategy and how to build for capabilities that don’t exist yet.
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You Have a Sub-Five Miler. Your Relay Team Still Loses.
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗You have ten engineers who could ship the next quarter alone. You have forty more who, through no fault of their own, cannot. Where do you put the AI investment, across the floor or into the ceiling? On the math, the answer most CTOs give is wrong, and the org chart you currently run is the residue of avoiding it for a decade.
Corporate fiction
Three books. One operating problem. No clean hero.
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