{R}R Dev Notes


Found total of 129 articles.

Loop Engineering, Chapter 1: The Anatomy of an Agentic Loop

Chapter 1 of the Loop Engineering blog series. Every agentic system begins with a single loop. A teaser on the ReAct pattern, why a loop beats a fixed prompt chain, the arithmetic of per-step reliability, and the discipline of a verifiable stopping condition.
2026-06-15

The Forward Deployed Engineer, Chapter 18: Hiring and Building the Bench

Chapter 18 of The Forward Deployed Engineer blog series. The FDE function is, in the end, a collection of people. A teaser on the hiring funnel, the four-round interview loop, compensation benchmarks ($170K–$600K+), onboarding, the career ladder, retention, and building a bench.
2026-06-13

The Forward Deployed Engineer, Chapter 16: When Not to Build an FDE Function

Chapter 16 of The Forward Deployed Engineer blog series. The inverse case — when an FDE function is the wrong answer. A teaser on the five disqualifying conditions, the alternative models, the hybrid patterns, the premature-optimization trap, and what to build instead.
2026-06-11

The Forward Deployed Engineer, Chapter 15: The Economics of Forward Deployment

Chapter 15 of The Forward Deployed Engineer blog series. The economic case for the FDE function — and the traps inside it. A teaser on the three pricing models, the impact on gross margin, the services-company trap, multi-year contracts, and what the math implies for founders.
2026-06-10

The Forward Deployed Engineer, Chapter 13: When FDE Goes Wrong — Failure Modes and Lessons

Chapter 13 of The Forward Deployed Engineer blog series. Six named failure modes that kill FDE functions before they scale. A teaser on the Consulting Trap, the Snowflake-per-Customer trap, the Hero Engineer, the Demo-Debt Spiral, the Sponsor Collapse, and the Burnout Death Spiral.
2026-06-08

The Forward Deployed Engineer, Chapter 12: The New AI Wave — OpenAI, Anthropic, Runway, Greptile

Chapter 12 of The Forward Deployed Engineer blog series. The new wave rebuilds the FDE function for the agentic era. A teaser on how OpenAI, Anthropic, Runway, and Greptile each adapted the Palantir template — what's different, what's the same, and three patterns founders should watch.
2026-06-07

The Forward Deployed Engineer, Chapter 10: Governance, Risk, and Safe Deployment

Chapter 10 of The Forward Deployed Engineer blog series. In regulated industries, governance is not a tax — it's a feature. A teaser on the risk taxonomy, audit trails, human-in-the-loop checkpoints, the EU AI Act, sector compliance, and the governance dashboard.
2026-06-05

The Forward Deployed Engineer, Chapter 6: The Soft Stack — Diplomacy and Strategy

Chapter 6 of The Forward Deployed Engineer blog series. The "soft stack" is the part of the FDE skillset most often dismissed as soft. A teaser on MECE, the Pyramid Principle, stakeholder mapping, Managing the Skeptic, the Diplomatic Register, and stress inoculation.
2026-06-01

The Forward Deployed Engineer, Chapter 5: The AI and Agentic Frontier

Chapter 5 of The Forward Deployed Engineer blog series. The technical bar that the FDE shares with platform engineers — plus the AI-specific skills that separate the role in 2026. A teaser on agents beyond chatbots, RAG, multi-agent orchestration, evals as a discipline, and model-agnostic deployment.
2026-05-31

The Engineering of Intent, Chapter 40: The De-Vibing Protocol — Stabilization Sprints for Production

Chapter 40 of The Engineering of Intent blog series. The final chapter and the remedy for the autocomplete trap — a two-week, agent-heavy stabilization sprint that moves a fast vibes-only build from 90/10 to 50/50 without halting feature development. A teaser on recognizing when you need it, the four tracks, and the three post-sprint disciplines.
2026-05-26

The Engineering of Intent, Chapter 36: The Long View

Chapter 36 of The Engineering of Intent blog series. The long view. What happens to our craft, our profession, and our lives over the next ten years? A teaser on cycles and waves, three things that will endure, three that will change, and a final word on identity.
2026-05-22

The Engineering of Intent, Chapter 34: Language-Specific Field Notes

Chapter 34 of The Engineering of Intent blog series. Every programming language produces its own Vibe Coding texture. A teaser with field notes on TypeScript, Python, Go, Rust, Java/Kotlin, Ruby, C#, and Shell — including the cross-language pattern that fixes agent default-to-stale-idiom in any language.
2026-05-20

The Engineering of Intent, Chapter 33: Building Your Personal Vibe Coding Operating System

Chapter 33 of The Engineering of Intent blog series. Every sustainable Vibe Coder has a personal operating system — tools, files, conventions, and habits that turn the practices in this book into your own durable system. A teaser on the five files, the three models, the two editors, the one discipline, and the wonder to keep.
2026-05-19

The Engineering of Intent, Chapter 30: Vibe Coding in the Frontend

Chapter 30 of The Engineering of Intent blog series. Frontend has a different shape — visual, fast-iterating — and specific failure modes around design systems, accessibility, state, and performance. A teaser on the four domains and the dashboard rebuild that shipped in eleven days.
2026-05-16

The Engineering of Intent, Chapter 28: The Tips Archive — 100 Notes from Daily Practice

Chapter 28 of The Engineering of Intent blog series. One hundred numbered tips from daily practice, collected over years. A teaser with twelve of the most-quoted — from "if you're repeating it three times, put it in agents.md" through "do not estimate in hours for agent-assisted work; estimate in cycles."
2026-05-14

The Engineering of Intent, Chapter 27: Anti-Patterns — What Not to Do

Chapter 27 of The Engineering of Intent blog series. Twenty-five named anti-patterns — the tempting shortcuts that look like speed and cost you the quarter. A teaser on ten of the worst, including Let-the-Agent-Decide, Rewrite-From-Scratch, Forever Pilot, and the Plan-Free Zone that pairs with One-Prompt-Solves-Everything to wreck AI-native rollouts.
2026-05-13

The Engineering of Intent, Chapter 26: Checklists for the Working Engineer

Chapter 26 of The Engineering of Intent blog series. Six one-page checklists I reach for mid-task — new feature, PR, deploy, post-incident, Context Pack health, and interview. A teaser on why checklists are most valuable when you're most confident you don't need them.
2026-05-12

The Engineering of Intent, Chapter 25: The Debugging Playbook

Chapter 25 of The Engineering of Intent blog series. A flipbook of the ten classes of bug in the AI-native regime, each with investigation pattern and worked example. A teaser on deterministic-but-wrong, intermittent, regression-after-refactor, concurrency, configuration, and the "it cannot happen" bug.
2026-05-11

Azure Front Door: a practical introduction

What Azure Front Door is, who it's for, what it costs, how it compares to Cloudflare and CloudFront, and a walkthrough of the settings that matter when putting it in front of an Azure App Service.
2026-05-11

The Engineering of Intent, Chapter 24: The Failure Mode Catalog

Chapter 24 of The Engineering of Intent blog series. Fifteen named failure modes I keep seeing in Vibe Coding practice, with remedies. A teaser on phantom confidence, silent scope creep, context amnesia, loop obsession, the yes-person agent, and the deprecation blind spot.
2026-05-10

The Engineering of Intent, Chapter 22: A Day in the Life — A Narrated Session

Chapter 22 of The Engineering of Intent blog series. A narrated recreation of a real, medium-complex working day — hour by hour — because average days are where practice gets tested. A teaser of the hourly shape, and the single rule behind all of it: agents are leverage on thinking you've done.
2026-05-08

The Engineering of Intent, Chapter 19: The End-of-Day Routine

Chapter 19 of The Engineering of Intent blog series. The last twenty minutes of your workday set up tomorrow. A teaser on the five-step end-of-day routine — handoff note, convention update, lesson capture, open-loop closure, and tomorrow's first task — plus the "one more thing" anti-pattern that undoes all of it.
2026-05-05

The Engineering of Intent, Chapter 18: The Prompt Patterns Catalog

Chapter 18 of The Engineering of Intent blog series. Ten prompt patterns I use every day, with the design moves behind them. A teaser on Planning, Targeted Diff, Adversarial Review, Bug-Hypothesis, Scoping-Down, Consistency-Check, Teach-Back, Written-Down-Rule, Test-First, and One-Page-Design prompts.
2026-05-04

The Engineering of Intent, Chapter 17: The Flow Loop

Chapter 17 of The Engineering of Intent blog series. Flow with an agent in the loop is different from classical flow, but just as performance-defining. A teaser on the two-minute rule, the three-strike rule, the flow killers, and the checkout refactor that shipped in one afternoon instead of two days.
2026-05-03

The Engineering of Intent, Chapter 15: The Future of the Human Engineer

Chapter 15 of The Engineering of Intent blog series. Am I going to be replaced? The honest answer, after five years of watching the discipline evolve. A teaser on intent architecture, staying relevant, the economic reshaping of the senior-to-junior ratio, and craft in a craftless era.
2026-05-01

The Engineering of Intent, Chapter 14: The 30-Day Pilot Framework

Chapter 14 of The Engineering of Intent blog series. Every successful AI-native transformation starts as a thirty-day pilot on a single well-scoped project. A teaser on how to scope the first project, the week-by-week playbook, the five-question graduation rubric, and the three pilots that show what works and what doesn't.
2026-04-30

The Engineering of Intent, Chapter 12: The GenDD Pod

Chapter 12 of The Engineering of Intent blog series. Three people, continuous flow, almost no ceremony — the team structure that actually ships AI-native work sustainably. A teaser on the Agentic Product Lead, Engineer, and QA roles, the transition from Agile, and the case study where a SaaS company went from 72 engineers to 24.
2026-04-28

The Engineering of Intent, Chapter 11: The Art of Agentic Debugging

Chapter 11 of The Engineering of Intent blog series. Debugging in the AI-native regime is archaeology — the code may have been written by an agent you supervised loosely. A teaser on the self-correction loop, control-flow visualization, bisection under velocity, and the caching heisenbug that took hours manually but fifteen minutes with the agent.
2026-04-27

The Engineering of Intent, Chapter 10: The Five-Layer Quality Gate Stack

Chapter 10 of The Engineering of Intent blog series. Every AI-generated change must pass five layers of automated gates before a human sees it. A teaser on linting, strict types, SAST, test synthesis, and agentic E2E — plus the anti-patterns that quietly invalidate the stack.
2026-04-26

The Engineering of Intent, Chapter 9: Advanced Context Engineering

Chapter 9 of The Engineering of Intent blog series. Context engineering is the highest-leverage activity in AI-native development. A teaser on the Context Pack, the Layered Prompt, the A/B test that proved more context isn't better context, and the three anti-patterns that quietly kill agent quality.
2026-04-25

The Engineering of Intent, Chapter 8: The Four Pillars of AI Architecture

Chapter 8 of The Engineering of Intent blog series. Every durable AI-native project has the same four pillars — Vibes, Specs, Skills, and Agents — and most teams over-invest in one and neglect the rest. A teaser on the pillars, the healthy cycle, and the rebalancing that cut a company's regression rate by 80%.
2026-04-24

The Engineering of Intent, Chapter 6: Autonomous Orchestration Frameworks

Chapter 6 of The Engineering of Intent blog series. Editors run one agent at a time; orchestration runs many. A teaser on task-specific personalities, memory banks, when to orchestrate (and when not), the 14,000-test case study, and the economics of multi-agent pipelines.
2026-04-22

The Engineering of Intent, Chapter 4: The Model Context Protocol (MCP)

Chapter 4 of The Engineering of Intent blog series. MCP is to agents what HTTP was to the early Web — a common protocol that turns bespoke integrations into reusable infrastructure. A teaser on host/client/server roles, the anatomy of a good tool, the six anti-patterns, and the security pitfalls every team trips over.
2026-04-20

The Engineering of Intent, Chapter 3: Context Momentum and Path Dependence

Chapter 3 of The Engineering of Intent blog series. Agents amplify project momentum — good patterns propagate, bad ones propagate just as fast. A teaser on the First Prompt Trap, context rot, the physics of convention drift, and the ten-thousand-dollar rule for decision rigor.
2026-04-19

The Engineering of Intent, Chapter 2: Cognitive Load and Material Disengagement

Chapter 2 of The Engineering of Intent blog series. When the agent does most of the typing, the real failure mode is the engineer who has stopped engaging. A teaser on material disengagement, impressionistic scanning, the autocomplete trap, decision fatigue, and the seven habits of engaged engineers.
2026-04-18

The Engineering of Intent, Chapter 1: The Triadic Relationship Model

Chapter 1 of The Engineering of Intent blog series. Software used to be a dyad between engineer and machine. Now a third actor — the AI agent — has joined permanently. A teaser covering the Triadic Relationship Model, the CMDP view of software, and the six failure modes every AI-native team needs to name.
2026-04-17

Frictionless SaaS, Chapter 24: Anti-Patterns and Failure Modes

The last chapter of Frictionless SaaS is about the mistakes teams keep making, even when they know better. A teaser covering the Anti-Pattern Registry, the Feature Trap, and the additional failure modes that quietly erode good products.
2026-04-14

Frictionless SaaS, Chapter 23: Pattern Libraries and Proven Approaches

Frameworks are nice. Patterns are what you actually ship. A teaser for Chapter 23 of Frictionless SaaS, introducing the Fast Activation Pattern Library, the Frictionless Onboarding Catalog, and a set of high-performing product patterns borrowed from the SaaS companies that get activation right.
2026-04-13

Frictionless SaaS, Chapter 22: AI, Automation, and the Future of Frictionless Design

In the AI era, features are commoditized overnight. So what actually becomes defensible? A teaser for Chapter 22 of Frictionless SaaS, covering the AI-Era SaaS Framework and the Experience Moat — the only lasting competitive advantage left.
2026-04-12

Frictionless SaaS, Chapter 19: Self-Serve Monetization and Growth

The Self-Serve Growth Engine, the Expansion Revenue Framework, and the Seamless Handoff Principle — how to turn upgrades into a natural moment instead of a sales call.
2026-04-09

Frictionless SaaS, Chapter 18: Building Knowledge Into Your Product

The Zero-Support Design Model, Contextual Help Architecture, and four AI Assistant Design Patterns that turn your product into its own best documentation.
2026-04-08

Frictionless SaaS Chapter 16: The Power of Self-Service

Chapter 16 preview of Frictionless SaaS: the Self-Serve Maturity Model, the Independence Principle, and how self-serve billing and account management turn scalability into a competitive moat.
2026-04-06

Frictionless SaaS Chapter 15: Continuous Optimization and the Data-Intuition Balance

Chapter 15 preview of Frictionless SaaS: the Experiment-Learn-Ship cycle, the Data-Intuition Balance, staged rollouts, and the retention operating model that turns improvement into a flywheel.
2026-04-05

Frictionless SaaS Chapter 14: Experience Observability and Friction Detection

Chapter 14 preview of Frictionless SaaS: experience observability, synthetic and real-user monitoring, and the friction detection engine that surfaces retention issues before they become churn.
2026-04-04

Frictionless SaaS Chapter 13: SaaS Metrics, Cohort Analysis, and the North Star

Chapter 13 preview of Frictionless SaaS: the SaaS Metrics Pyramid, Net Revenue Retention, cohort-based optimization, and how to choose a North Star that actually drives retention and revenue.
2026-04-03

Frictionless SaaS Chapter 12: Detecting Disengagement and Structured Win-Back

Chapter 12 preview of Frictionless SaaS: the Disengagement Detection System, the four-touch Win-Back Sequence, and why value rediscovery beats discount offers every time.
2026-04-02

Frictionless SaaS Chapter 11: Lifecycle Messaging and Engagement

Chapter 11 preview of Frictionless SaaS: the Lifecycle Messaging Architecture, the Message-Moment Fit Principle, and the Customer Feedback Loop Framework for turning communication into a retention engine.
2026-04-01

Frictionless SaaS Chapter 10: Data Lock-In and Network Lock-In

Chapter 10 preview of Frictionless SaaS: the Data Gravity Effect, the Network Lock-In Model, and how to build structural moats that make churn expensive without being manipulative.
2026-03-31

Frictionless SaaS Chapter 9: Eliminating Friction and Building Consistency

Chapter 9 preview of Frictionless SaaS: the Friction Audit Matrix, the Consistency Principle, perceived speed, and information ergonomics - the retention levers most teams ignore.
2026-03-30

Frictionless SaaS, Chapter 8: Designing for Habit - Why Retention Is Your Real Growth Engine

Chapter 8 of the Frictionless SaaS blog series. Retention is the multiplier on every dollar of acquisition you'll ever spend. The Habit Loop Engine, the Return Reason Architecture, and the DAU/WAU signals that tell you whether you're building a habit or a one-night stand.
2026-03-29