Agents should not call tools
Most agent stacks let the model pick a tool and log the call. I think that is the wrong default. Agents should ask for business capabilities instead.
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Progressive Autonomy for AI Agents: From Intern to Principal
Treat AI agents like new staff. They start with read-only access and earn more over time. Someone watches for odd behaviour, and there is a kill switch.
Why Your Company Needs One API Platform, Not Six
We used six separate tools to run our APIs. Here is why we moved to one platform, what we got wrong on the way, and when one platform is the wrong choice.
Multi-Tenant SaaS with PostgreSQL Row-Level Security: Beyond the Basics
How we kept tenants apart in a Go SaaS platform with PostgreSQL row-level security. The things that bit us, and the point where RLS stopped being enough.
The Block Pipeline Pattern: Composable Middleware Without the Mess
Middleware chains get messy as a product grows. A small block interface keeps an API gateway readable, cheap to extend and easy to test. Plus my mistakes.
Last Year: Invest in AI. This Year: Cut Costs.
Boards now want AI investment and a smaller tech budget at the same time. How to decide what to fund, what to stop, and how to defend an AI platform budget.
Why Every Enterprise Needs an AI Gateway
Most companies send LLM traffic straight from apps to providers. An AI gateway adds DLP, prompt-injection checks, cost caps, routing and an audit log.
Burnout at Scale: What Running 200 Engineers Taught Me
I burned out while leading 200 engineers across four countries through a platform rebuild. What it looked like, what I got wrong, and what helped.
AI Made Our Junior Engineers Faster and Our Senior Engineers Slower
AI coding tools made our junior engineers faster and our senior engineers slower. What happened, why I think it happened, and what we changed.
DORA Metrics Are Not Enough. Here Is What We Measure Instead.
Our DORA numbers stopped making sense once AI coding tools arrived. These are the measures we added, and how we put them on one dashboard.
Your Board Wants 20% Fewer Engineers. Here Is What to Say.
The board read that AI replaces 20% of engineering work and wants to cut heads. How a CTO can answer with numbers and a counter-proposal the CFO will respect.
70% of Your Engineers Are Using AI Tools You Do Not Know About
One of my engineers pasted a production schema into ChatGPT. Banning AI tools would not have stopped it. A gateway, an approved list and data tiers did.
I Spent Six Months Studying AI Regulations. Here Is What Matters.
I spent six months reading the EU AI Act, DORA, NIS2 and the UK AI Cyber Security Code. Three parts matter most for engineering leaders. Much of the rest less.
How I Learned to Talk About Engineering in Money
Early in my career I could not put a number on what my teams were worth. Running a consulting P&L and leading engineering at Maersk taught me to talk in money.