Field Notes
Longer-form notes on the same craft behind the case studies: domain boundaries, delivery trade-offs, and the decisions that hold up once a system meets real load.
Vector search retrieves semantically similar chunks, but semantic similarity isn't the same as factual correctness. Here's how I used an event-sourced ledger as the ground-truth anchor for a RAG system — and why the combination is more reliable than either approach alone.
Full automation is seductive, but in coaching, healthcare, and high-stakes advisory domains, an AI that acts without a human checkpoint is a risk you can't afford. Here's the approval-queue architecture I built in production and what it taught me about where AI actually belongs in the loop.
Most teams reach for microservices to solve a modularity problem they could have solved inside a single Laravel deployable. Domain-driven boundaries inside a monolith get you most of the benefit without the operational tax.