Writing
RSSEssays on this site
An Interview Inside the Browser
Real-time video, an embedded code editor and proctoring, running together in one tab while someone is being assessed for a job. Three subsystems that each assume they own the main thread, and the loading decision I had backwards to begin with.
Default-Deny Rights in an Autonomous Documentary Pipeline
A pipeline that publishes without a human in the loop has to make rights a condition of entry, not a review step. The failure mode you choose is the design decision. The check you write is only the implementation.
How to Show Engineering Ownership When the Repositories Are Private
Every repository I have shipped production code into belongs to somebody else. This is the method I use to make ownership claims that can be judged rather than believed, and the claims it forces me to make smaller.
One Outbox Record per Notification
Two independent producers for push and in-app notifications will eventually disagree, and the disagreement is a category of bug rather than an instance of one. Making them the same record made divergence structurally impossible, and it cost me something I think was worth paying.
Surviving Your AI Providers
A retry loop around a dead provider multiplies delay instead of providing a fallback. One gateway, a capability-to-tier router, a cross-provider chain and a breaker per provider, plus the parts of this design I still count as a cost rather than a solved problem.
The Feature I Chose Not to Ship
An over-the-air update splash screen that would have covered a narrow gap during app boot, and degraded every background-to-foreground switch instead. Reproducing it on a real device, reading the dependency, and reverting.