The Archive

A working record of applied AI, software architecture and human performance. Every entry, in one place.

11 entries shown Sort: recent

My AI Investigated a Colleague Without Being Asked

I asked Claude to look into a question. It searched our Slack, named who sent it, and judged what they’d got wrong, none of which I authorised.

AI 08 Jul 2026

Entry #010

AI Didn’t Kill Junior Engineers. It Killed Spec-Following.

Junior-developer jobs are shrinking, not because AI codes better but because it executes to spec faster than a junior can. That changes what to hire for.

Engineering 06 Jul 2026

Entry #009

Your AI Boost Is Capped by the Work You Didn’t Touch

You promised leadership a 4× boost from AI. You got 1.5×. The missing speed is locked in the stages you never pointed it at. Here’s the maths.

AI 01 Jul 2026

Entry #008

AI Takes the Effort. The Effort Was the Point.

I went down a rabbit hole about what AI does to how we learn. Outsource the effort and you lose the faculty, unless you keep the thinking for yourself.

AI 24 Jun 2026

Entry #007

AI Didn’t Kill Stack Overflow. ‘Marked as Duplicate’ Did.

Stack Overflow didn’t die because AI got good. It died because it made asking a question feel like a trial, and the moat it built became its undoing.

Engineering 10 Jun 2026

Entry #006

AI Won’t Find Your Bug. It’ll Confirm Your Hunch.

We brought Claude into our first incident war room. The lesson: give it a hypothesis to test, not a mystery to solve.

AI 27 May 2026

Entry #005

A Quarter’s Work in Five Weeks, Without Vibe-Coding

A three-to-four-month project shipped in five weeks. AI-first, with more discipline, not less. The change was prototypes over specs, humans in the loop.

Engineering 06 May 2026

Entry #004

Long AI Chats Don’t Degrade. Unstructured Ones Do

Everyone says start fresh before a long AI chat degrades. I ran one for six weeks on a hard refactor, and it got better. Here’s why.

AI 15 Apr 2026

Entry #003

How We Cut a Firestore Analytics Bill by 96% Without a Rewrite

Our most expensive project was a dashboard misusing Firestore as an analytics store. The fix was not a migration but matching the model to the billing.

Engineering 25 Mar 2026

Entry #002

Training for Capacity, Not Intensity

I train for the capacity hard work runs on, not to look better. My cardio is swimming, not running. Same result, far less joint wear.

Fitness 04 Mar 2026

Entry #001

How AI Code Review Went From Distrusted to Mandatory in a Year

Our engineers ignored the AI reviewer for months, then made it a mandatory step themselves. A story about adopting AI by demonstration, not by mandate.

AI 21 Jan 2026