Insights
Notes from real engineering work.
Failure modes, architecture decisions and practical lessons from building systems that have to keep running. Most of them start with something of mine going wrong.
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Platform & Reliability
The monitor that went quiet
Two of my own systems were down without me knowing, for two days and for seven weeks. Neither failed loudly, and the fix was not a better restart.
2026-08-14 -
AI-native Delivery
Why AI writes the code and a check decides if it ships
The model is a component, not the system. What decides whether work ships is a gate that has been watched going red, not the speed it was written at.
2026-08-14 -
Build Notes
2,153 passing tests and a product that could not send
A release audit returned NOT READY over a fully green test suite. The tests mocked the seams that were broken, which is what a green suite is for.
2026-08-14 -
Build Notes
A compliance rule that fails the build
A wellness app cannot make medical claims, so the wording policy is a linter in CI. Beside it sits a self-test whose fixture must exit non-zero.
2026-08-14 -
AI Engineering
My best AI automation habits came from DevOps, not AI
Idempotency, one shared error handler, scoped credentials, alerts and a human review path. The habits that keep an AI automation alive are not AI habits.
2026-07-28 -
Automation Architecture
A workflow that only works with clean inputs is a demo
Duplicate events, missing fields and slow APIs are normal production conditions, not edge cases. Three real failures and what they changed about the build.
2026-07-28 -
Automation Architecture
Zapier, Make or n8n? I ask who owns it when it breaks
A tool comparison that keeps turning into an ownership question: alerting, replay, visibility, where credentials live, and whether you can move later.
2026-07-28
The one that sounded familiar
Did one of these describe something of yours?
Tell me which one and what it looks like on your side. I will tell you what I would look at first.
Message Dan on WhatsApp (opens in a new tab)or email dan@burdetsky.xyz