Blog
Notes from the field: cloud, AI, leadership, and building startups.
Building Reliable Tool-Use Pipelines with Claude
Patterns for implementing Claude tool use and function calling in production with validation, error recovery, and safe execution.
Automated Semantic Code Review with Kiro Agents
Kiro agents perform behavioral code review that catches design-level issues before human reviewers spend time on them.
AlloyDB vs Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL: Benchmarks at 10K TPS Production Load
Head-to-head performance comparison of AlloyDB and Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL under sustained 10,000 TPS workloads with real-world query patterns.
AWS EFS Throughput Modes Explained: Pick the Right One
Benchmark data for EFS Bursting vs Elastic vs Provisioned throughput modes. Includes cost comparisons, fio results, and a decision framework to avoid performance surprises.
Database Replication Lag Monitoring: Real-Time Alerting for High Availability
Real-time replication lag monitoring and alerting systems that prevent stale reads and maintain consistency in distributed databases.
Architecture Decisions for MVPs That Don't Haunt You at Series B
How to make pragmatic architecture choices during the MVP phase that balance speed-to-market with future scalability needs.
AWS RDS Proxy Connection Pooling: Surviving Lambda Concurrency Spikes
How RDS Proxy eliminated connection exhaustion during Lambda bursts, reducing database errors by 99.7% and cutting connection setup latency from 45ms to 3ms.
Generating Production-Grade Terraform with Kiro
Kiro generates Terraform configurations that follow organizational standards, complete with state management, tagging policies, and security guardrails.
Technical Metrics That Belong in Investor Updates
How CTOs can communicate engineering progress to investors using metrics that demonstrate velocity, quality, and technical health without overwhelming non-technical stakeholders
Exposing SaaS Services Securely with AWS PrivateLink: Architecture and Cost Model
A deep dive into AWS PrivateLink architecture for SaaS providers, covering endpoint services, cost modeling, and security patterns for private connectivity.
Building an Inclusive Engineering Culture
Practical actions engineering leaders can take to build teams where everyone can contribute their best work regardless of background, identity, or communication style
Claude Context Window Optimization for Production
Strategies for maximizing Claude context window efficiency, reducing costs, and improving response quality through intelligent context management.
Code Review Practices That Improve Quality Without Slowing Velocity
A practical framework for engineering teams to ship faster while maintaining high code quality through structured review processes.
GCP Cloud Functions Gen2: Performance Gains with Concurrency and Cloud Run Integration
Deep-dive into Cloud Functions Gen2 performance improvements over Gen1, including concurrency benefits, cold start reductions, and real-world benchmarks.
LLM Structured Output: JSON Mode, Function Calling, and Constrained Generation
Production patterns for extracting reliable structured data from LLMs including JSON mode, grammar-constrained decoding, and schema validation strategies
CDN Origin Shield: How We Reduced Origin Bandwidth by 85%
Origin shield implementation with CloudFront that reduced origin bandwidth by 85% and cut origin infrastructure costs significantly.
Using Kiro Hooks for Automated Testing and CI/CD Integration
Kiro hooks trigger automated workflows on file events, letting you build CI/CD-like feedback loops directly inside your development environment.
AWS Cost Anomaly Detection: Catching Runaway Spend Before It Hits Your Bill
How we configured Cost Anomaly Detection to identify unexpected spending within 6 hours, saving $47,000 in a single quarter from early detection of misconfigurations.
Building an Internal Developer Portal That Reduced Deployment Friction by 70%
How we built an Internal Developer Platform using Backstage that cut deployment lead time from 45 minutes to 12 minutes and reduced onboarding time for new engineers by 60%.
Systematic Prompt Engineering for Claude in Production
A data-driven methodology for prompt engineering with measurable quality metrics, regression testing, and continuous improvement loops.
Serverless Event Filtering Patterns for Cost and Performance
Implementing event filtering at the source level in AWS Lambda, EventBridge, and SQS to reduce invocations by 70% and lower serverless costs
How Spec-Driven Development with Kiro Transformed Our Engineering Velocity
Spec-driven development with Kiro eliminates ambiguity before a single line of code is written, cutting our cycle time by 40%.
Building Engineering Culture in a Remote-First Startup
How to create a high-performing engineering culture when your team has never shared an office and traditional culture-building approaches do not apply
Cross-Region Data Transfer: Measuring and Mitigating Latency Penalties
Measuring and mitigating cross-region transfer penalties with real production data from a multi-region AWS deployment.
Handling the Toxic Brilliant Engineer
How to address a high-performing engineer whose behavior damages the team, when to invest in coaching, and when to make the hard decision to let them go
Saga Pattern for Distributed Transactions: Orchestration, Compensation, and Production Pitfalls
Implementing the saga pattern for distributed transactions across 12 microservices with compensation logic, idempotency guarantees, and observability at 8K sagas/second.
Building an AI-Assisted Data Labeling Pipeline
End-to-end architecture for scalable data labeling combining human annotators with AI pre-labeling, active learning, and quality assurance automation
Automating AWS IAM Least Privilege with Access Analyzer: From Over-Permissioned to Locked Down
How we reduced our IAM policy permissions by 89% using Access Analyzer policy generation and automated continuous enforcement without breaking production workloads.
Claude API Production Integration Patterns
Battle-tested patterns for integrating Claude into production systems with proper error handling, retries, and observability.
AWS Config Custom Compliance Rules for Enterprise Governance
Building custom AWS Config rules with Lambda and Guard policy language for organization-specific compliance requirements
