Notes from the workshop

What we learned building things, written up while it was still fresh. No thought leadership, no listicles.

Data models are harder to change than code

Everything else can be rewritten in an afternoon. The schema is the decision you live with, so it gets the most argument.

EngineeringDataArchitecture

Engineering · 6 min

19 Jan 2026

Estimating when part of the work is generated

Agent-assisted implementation is faster. The parts around it — deciding, reviewing, testing, integrating — are not, and that changes the shape of an estimate.

ProcessAIScoping

Process · 6 min

16 Jan 2026

A marketplace that had to stay up during launch week

Build note: what we changed in the two weeks before a campaign that multiplied traffic by twenty.

Case studyPerformanceEngineering

Case notes · 6 min

15 Jan 2026

Designing the failure path of an AI feature

Every model is wrong sometimes. The interface either makes that survivable or it doesn't, and that is a design decision.

AIProductDesign

AI · 6 min

14 Jan 2026

The integration that lies about its rate limit

Third-party APIs are the most common source of schedule slip in our projects. What we do during discovery to price them honestly.

EngineeringIntegrationsScoping

Engineering · 6 min

13 Jan 2026

Generated tests are not a test strategy

A model can produce a thousand test cases in a minute. Coverage went up and nothing got safer — here is what we changed.

TestingAIQuality

Quality · 6 min