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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Gen AI in the SDLC Is Infrastructure Now,And Every One of Your Engineers Picked Their Own
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗Download EPUB ↓Gen AI in the SDLC is now infrastructure, not innovation. But every engineer picked their own stack. Here’s why that’s a governance problem.
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The Fifty Million Dollar Question, Stop Transforming. Start Building.
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗Every leader I ask the fifty million dollar question gives the same answer. They would not build what they have now. They would start over from first principles with something smaller, leaner, and faster. That answer tells me whether they understand how software gets made, or whether they are just running the theater.
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Exploring Developer Happiness in the AI-SDLC
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗Exploring what developer happiness looks like when AI handles the tedious work. Research and insights on the emotional side of AI adoption.
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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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Goodnight to Epics, Stories and Features: A Feature A Day is the New Normal
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗The sprint is dead. AI-native teams ship features daily, not fortnightly. Learn how to adapt your agile processes for the new velocity.
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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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The Use Case Is Building Software and the Best Practice Is Today
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗Stop asking about AI use cases. The use case is your entire SDLC. Learn why executives must build with AI tools themselves to lead the transformation.
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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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I Want You Software Developers to Be Unhappy (Keep Reading, It’s Not What You Think It Is)
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗The AI Engineer is a new job family, and it is the future of this profession. The "software developer" as the role has been defined for fifteen years is going through what farmers went through with the tractor. If you are still doing the old job and you are not unhappy, you have not been paying attention.
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You Added AI. Congratulations, You Now Run a Slop Factory.
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗You gave your engineers AI tools and skipped the governance conversation. Now your PRs are tripling, your review queue is drowning, and nobody can tell the good code from the generated garbage. You did not adopt AI. You built a slop factory.
Corporate fiction
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