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Essays

Deep engineering writing on production AI systems, distributed systems, failure modes, and architecture judgment.

Essay results

16 essays

Agents19 min readOctober 26, 2026

Why Google Built a Computer for Every AI Agent

Google gives AI agents isolated computers without keeping every computer running. A detailed engineering review of microVMs, checkpoint recovery, credentials, memory, and scale.

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Agents12 min readOctober 25, 2026

MCP vs Agent Skills vs A2A: What Each Does in a Real AI Agent

An AI agent finishes a database-migration review, but the dashboard says the migration ran. Understand how Agent Skills, MCP, A2A, and application state fit together.

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Agents18 min readOctober 6, 2026

How Coding Agents Actually Work: Inside the Agent Harness

A technical look inside coding agent harnesses, covering context management, repository search, tools, sandboxes, subagents, durable sessions, recovery, concurrency, completion and evaluation.

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Production AI Systems16 min readOctober 2, 2026

OpenAI Decisions API vs Jev: Designing Systems Around Decisions Instead of Generation

A technical comparison of OpenAI Decisions API and Jev, and how to design a decision layer for routing, tool selection, risk, abstention, calibration and AI agent control.

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Agents16 min readOctober 1, 2026

Designing Containment for Production AI Agents

Production AI agent containment needs more than a sandbox. It needs separate information, execution and effect boundaries, scoped capabilities, egress controls, quarantine, and independent runtime enforcement.

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Agents15 min readSeptember 28, 2026

Designing Continuous Evaluation for Production AI Agents

Production AI agent evaluation needs more than task success. It needs behavioral checks, trajectory analysis, outcome verification, failure lineage, repeated trials, statistical release gates, and production failures feeding new evaluation evidence.

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Production AI Systems14 min readSeptember 21, 2026

Designing Production AI Systems with Jev

Jev is useful when an AI system needs fast bounded decisions around generative work. The production design still needs state construction, versioned questions, policy, calibration, observability, and clear boundaries around when to act, escalate, or collect more evidence.

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Production AI Systems11 min readSeptember 20, 2026

A Skill Is Not a File. It Is a Deploy: Designing Agent Skills Infrastructure

Production Agent Skills are deployments, not files. They need immutable versions, controlled rollout, revocation, trust boundaries, progressive resolution, and a runtime path designed for scale.

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Production AI Systems11 min readSeptember 7, 2026

An ALLOW Is Not a Permit: Designing Runtime Authorization for AI Agents

Runtime authorization for AI agents needs more than an ALLOW decision. Production systems need exact action identity, bounded permits, reservations, revocation, serialization, and reconciliation with the resulting business effect.

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Production AI Systems7 min readSeptember 5, 2026

Designing Identity and Delegation for Production AI Agents

Production AI agents need explicit human identity, managed agent identity, trusted workload identity, narrow delegation, and an evidence chain that survives every authorization hop.

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Production AI Systems12 min readSeptember 1, 2026

Stateless MCP Didn't Delete Your State: Designing Production MCP Infrastructure

Stateless MCP removes hidden protocol sessions, not application state. Production infrastructure still needs explicit interaction state, durable Tasks, identity, business effect tracking, routing, admission control, and failover.

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Production AI Systems11 min readAugust 30, 2026

Designing Observability for Production AI Agents

Production AI agent observability needs more than traces. It needs stable run identity, context manifests, structured telemetry, failure-aware collection, and verified outcomes.

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Agents12 min readAugust 12, 2026

Designing the Context Layer for Production AI Agents

Production AI agents need a context layer that assembles evidence, preserves authority and freshness, and separates model reasoning from durable workflow state.

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Agents8 min readAugust 4, 2026

Designing Long-Running AI Agents That Survive Failures

Long-running AI agents need durable execution, explicit state, idempotent actions, bounded retries, recovery workflows, and operational control to survive real production failures.

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Engineering Knowledge19 min readJuly 9, 2026

The Truth Is Not in the Docs

Production knowledge is not only in documentation. It is spread across code, tickets, incidents, ownership, permissions, dashboards, and the decisions engineers make under pressure.

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