Blog

Notes from the Terminal

Business decisions and engineering details, from choosing what to build to understanding what happens when it fails.

Engineering and business decisions

Oct 2, 2026agentic-codingai-engineeringfractional-cto

Agentic Coding Is a Process Problem, Not a Model Problem

Picking a model is the smallest decision in agentic coding. A fractional CTO's guide to alignment, vertical slices, token budgets and guardrails, with a checklist for founders and engineering leads.

→ 13 min read

Oct 2, 2026Updated Oct 2, 2026software-architecturetechnical-roadmapengineering-judgment

Build a Software Roadmap Before Committing to a Rewrite

An original fictional exercise: inventory a service firm's software, compare competing priorities, and define a reversible first increment with explicit acceptance and rollback criteria.

→ 10 min read

Oct 2, 2026Updated Oct 2, 2026fractional-ctotechnical-leadershipdecision-making

When Does a Service Business Need a Fractional CTO?

A practical way to choose between fractional technical leadership, a scoped developer, an agency and a full-time hire, with a fictional decision memo you can adapt.

→ 6 min read

Oct 2, 2026Updated Oct 2, 2026fractional-ctoarchitecturesoftware-decisions

Build, Buy or Integrate? A Fictional Service-Business Decision

A fictional acoustic-survey studio weighs a custom application, a purchased platform and a small integration against delivery capacity, cost and maintenance. Change the assumptions and the recommendation changes.

→ 9 min read

Oct 2, 2026Updated Oct 2, 2026api-designidempotencyfailure-handling

What an API Timeout Does and Does Not Tell You

A reproducible synthetic lending experiment shows why a lost reply needs stable request identity, separate notification state and a recovery plan before another retry.

→ 9 min read

Feb 28, 2026Updated Oct 2, 2026spacetimedbtypescriptstate-machines

A Caller-Owned Workflow with SpacetimeDB and Next.js

How this portfolio separates a local state simulation from a private realtime workflow, with explicit ownership, subscription readiness and recovery after an uncertain command.

→ 6 min read

Feb 14, 2026Updated Oct 2, 2026code-reviewaitypescript

Evaluating AI Code Review: Correctness Before Confidence

A practical evaluation plan for code-review assistants: test the contract, count false positives, compare like with like, and make a useful comment earn its place.

→ 5 min read

Start with a question

Choose a reading path

Read in sequence, then inspect the work behind the decisions.

Technical leadership for service businesses

Choose the responsibility, compare the options and plan a useful first increment.

Fractional CTO support

Reliable full-stack software

Follow request identity, caller ownership and recovery when a result is uncertain.

How this portfolio is built

Agent tooling and AI code review

Connect the development process to reviewable checks and explicit execution boundaries.

MAINFRAME shell policy and checkpoints