When the Spec Was Wrong: Rewriting a Shipped Decision
Two weeks after I shipped a post about a scoring engine I'd built, I rewrote the spec it was based on. Here's what I learned, and why I had an AI agent do the literature review.
Blog
One week of SDD in production: the numbers
The previous two posts made claims. Here is what a week of the workflow looks like as a data trail, PRs, deploys, CI runs, specs merged, pulled from GitHub.
SDD isn't about managing AI agents, it's about managing context
Spec-driven development reads like a methodology for controlling AI agents. It isn't. It's a methodology for managing context across stateless sessions. The spec is the persistent memory.
Specs in, deploys out, no keyboard
Two production sites, a blog, and two personal AI projects, shipped this week from a phone. The chain is voice dictation into Perplexity Computer, a spec, then Claude Code on the web. The interaction model is the story.
Building a Personal Finance App with AI: Graham-Aligned Portfolio Review
How I built a personal financial position reviewer using Python Lambda, multi-agent AI on AWS Bedrock, and Graham's value investing framework, and what I learned building AI applications outside work.
Building an AI Marathon Coach: Deterministic Rules, LLM Narratives, and the 2026 NYC Marathon
How I built a personal AI coaching system for marathon training, layering deterministic guardrails over an LLM narrative engine, ingesting Garmin FIT files, and designing for my own injury history.
Designing Safety Guardrails for Distributed Workflow Orchestration
Patterns for pre-execution safety checks, parallel validation, opt-out design, and extensible guardrail architecture on workflow platforms.
Spec-Driven Development and the Folder Architecture That Makes It Work
Why spec-driven development and structured folder architecture are the missing infrastructure for AI-assisted engineering — methodology, common mistakes, and where to start.
Book Review: Enterprise Vibe Coding Playbook, Building Real Software with AI
A practitioner's review of Doug Kerwin's Enterprise Vibe Coding Playbook, why AI as a thinking partner, not a replacement, is the framework enterprise engineering teams need.
Building Multi-Region Workflow Orchestration: Lessons from DUB, SEA, SJO, NYC
Designing cross-region workflow orchestration that holds across Dublin, Seattle, San Jose, and New York, self-service platforms, SLA definitions, and AI-native execution infrastructure.
Enterprise MFA at Scale: QR Codes, Self-Service Portals, and Zero Help-Desk Friction
How I owned and evolved enterprise MFA platforms serving tens of thousands of employees, from the RSA Self Service Portal to QR Code-based provisioning and mobile authentication.
How I Standardized Infrastructure Monitoring Across an Entire Fleet
How I built and drove adoption of unified monitoring standards across enterprise fleets at Amazon and Prudential, from alerting baselines to org-wide observability.
Welcome: Building Platforms for Scale
An introduction to the blog, reflections on infrastructure monitoring, platform leadership, and building systems that empower organizations to innovate safely at scale.