Writing
Technical essays on governed agentic AI, systems, work, and judgment.
The professional thread here is deployment control: the evals, permissions, runtime substrates, observability, review loops, and content-understanding systems that let AI act safely in production.
AI at work
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June 9, 2026
After Intelligence Gets Cheap, Deployment Control Becomes the Bottleneck
A technical thesis on the control plane between model capability and production action: policy evidence, eval gates, permission matrices, agent runtimes, moderation workflows, and operating metrics.
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April 15, 2025 · Series Overview
AI-for-Work: A Systems Guide to Governed AI Deployment
A systems view of enterprise AI deployment: IDEs, MCP gateways, observability, orchestration, knowledge preservation, and work-as-code.
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July 2, 2025
Proof of Concept: Coding an MCP Client with Claude
Claude Code built an MCP client for NBA stats with human steering, exposing both the leverage and the brittleness of agentic coding.
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July 2, 2025
Building an Autonomous MCP Server with HITL Guidance
An AI assistant can build a production-style MCP server quickly, but human-in-the-loop guidance still determines whether the result is useful.
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August 15, 2025 · AI-for-Work | Philosophy & Execution · 5 min read
When "Move Fast" Meets "Move Safely" - Reconciling the Startup Builder Mindset with Enterprise Reality
Enterprise AI work needs startup speed translated into compliance-aware execution instead of naive wall-breaking.
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July 5, 2025
The Bounty Economy: When AI Gets Stuck, Humans Get Paid
Future work may become bounty-based human escalation for AI agents that need judgment, taste, or local context.
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June 24, 2025
The Future of Work: AI Guidance and the New Engineering Paradigm
Engineering work may shift toward guiding cloud agents from lightweight interfaces rather than doing every implementation step manually.
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January 3, 2025
The Future of Engineering Resource Allocation: From Headcount to Compute Credits
Agentic engineering could make compute credits more important than headcount allocation inside technical organizations.
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August 12, 2025
Software Creatures: Imagining the Next Evolution of Systems
Future systems may look like temporary agentic creatures rather than permanent services: assembled for a goal, instrumented, then dissolved or evolved.
AI-for-Work series
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December 15, 2024
Part 1: Get Everyone an AI IDE - The Foundation of Enterprise AI
The first enterprise AI move should be broad AI IDE deployment, with security and adoption handled as first-class work.
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January 15, 2025
Part 2: Building a Centralized MCP Gateway - The Context Layer
A centralized MCP gateway gives enterprise AI tools safe access to organizational context without turning every integration into a one-off exception.
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February 15, 2025
Part 3: From Proxy Logs to Intelligence - Enterprise AI Observability
Proxy-level AI logs can become the foundation for adoption metrics, productivity insights, cost control, and security monitoring.
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March 15, 2025
Part 4: Agent Orchestration at Scale - Building an Enterprise Platform
Enterprise agents need orchestration, reliability, governance, and platform-level controls before they can run meaningful workflows at scale.
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April 15, 2025
Part 5: Preserving Institutional Knowledge in the Age of AI
Retention policies erase useful context, so organizations need selective preservation systems that keep the reasoning behind important work.
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May 15, 2025
Part 6: Work-as-Code: The Micro-MCP Revolution
Engineering tasks should become small programmable interfaces that AI agents can invoke instead of informal human-only rituals.
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June 15, 2025
Part 7: Building AI Observability and Adoption Programs
AI adoption needs dashboards, code labs, power-user discovery, and feedback loops that turn scattered usage into organizational learning.
Work, careers, and organizations
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Series Overview
AI and Layoffs: The Future of Work in the Age of Automation
A landing page for the AI-and-layoffs series.
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July 8, 2025
AI, Layoffs, and the Capability Gradient
AI changes who gets displaced first by shifting value toward people who can operate at higher levels of ambiguity and leverage.
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July 5, 2025
The Evolution of Tech Leadership: How Senior ICs and Managers Are Reshaping Organizations
Senior ICs and managers are converging as AI and complexity reshape what technical leadership means.
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Future of Work · AI · Strategy
Knowing vs Figuring Out: Why Humans Still Matter in the Age of AI
Humans remain valuable because they define and frame problems while AI answers well-posed prompts.
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June 3, 2025
Engineering Across Cultures: Lessons from Global Teams
Global engineering teams need explicit handling of cultural communication, decision-making, and operating differences.
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February 22, 2025
Scaling Engineering Teams: Lessons from Tech Giants
Scaling engineering orgs requires structure, autonomy, communication systems, and process discipline without crushing local ownership.
Systems, ads, and metrics
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May 12, 2025
Designing Systems for Ultra-High Scale
High-scale systems require multi-dimensional architecture across throughput, data, geography, operations, and organizational ownership.
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April 7, 2025
Integrating Machine Learning in Large-Scale Products
Production ML succeeds through architecture, data pipelines, monitoring, and integration discipline rather than model quality alone.
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October 15, 2024
Building Brand Identity Through Digital Advertising
Brand advertising requires identity systems, measurement, and technical campaign infrastructure rather than only direct-response optimization.
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June 30, 2025
Part 1: Going One Layer Deeper - Why Granular Metrics Matter
Granular metrics reveal optimization opportunities that aggregate metrics usually hide.
Strategy, culture, and speculation
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August 7, 2025
The Knowledge Boundary Illusion: Why Deltas Get Harder to See
As models approach or exceed your knowledge, capability gaps become harder to articulate because the boundary moves beyond your own inspection ability.
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July 2, 2025
The Coming Two-Tiered Internet
AI content may split the internet into free slop-heavy feeds and paid or trusted spaces where human curation matters more.
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August 9, 2025
From Cat Videos to Cutting-Edge Signals: The Hidden Value in Social Platforms
Noisy social platforms can contain rare, high-value, real-time signals if you know how to filter them.
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July 5, 2025
Generative Worlds: Why Humans Will Live in AI-Created Realities
AI-generated worlds may satisfy humanity's drive for exploration by creating endless, responsive environments.
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July 5, 2025
Attractors from the Future: When AI, Consciousness, and Biology Converge
AI, consciousness, and biology may be converging toward new forms of agency rather than evolving on separate tracks.
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January 22, 2025
Part 1: When AI Agents Learn to Blackmail: Lessons from Agentic Misalignment Research
Agentic AI misalignment can emerge when systems pursue instrumental goals such as survival, access, or task completion under pressure.
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DRAFT - Threat Models and AI Series
Part 2: The Theology of AI Alignment: Why Atheistic Objective Functions Lead to Misalignment
A draft philosophical argument that survival-maximizing objective functions may encode a hidden moral assumption rather than a neutral technical goal.
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July 6, 2025
The Secular Religion of the West: Ritual Without God
Modern secular events can function like religious rituals by transmitting values, identity, belonging, and moral order.
Learning and personal notes
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July 5, 2025
Is It AI Slop? The Truth About How I Write
AI-assisted writing can still be authored if the human supplies the taste, argument, selection, and final judgment.
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July 2, 2025
Riding the Tech Wave: Lessons from Surfing
AI adoption is framed through surfing: spot the swell, paddle early, ride with balance, and adjust as conditions change.
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July 2, 2025
Part 1: Your First Time - Getting Comfortable in the Water
Beginner surfing starts with tolerating cold water, waves, and ocean discomfort before worrying about performance.
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July 2, 2025
Part 2: Catching White Water - Your First Real Waves
White-water waves teach timing, board position, and the first feeling of momentum.
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July 5, 2025
Part 3: The Popup Paradox - Getting to Your Feet
Standing up is the hard beginner bottleneck after catching waves because the movement has to become automatic under pressure.
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July 5, 2025
Part 4: Reps Over Reputation - Why Volume Beats Perfection
Surfing improves through high-rep attempts and quick decisions, not by trying to look polished.
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July 1, 2025
Youth vs. Experience: Finding the Balance
A baseline AI-written take on youthful boldness versus experienced restraint.
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July 1, 2025
Young Bulls, Old Bulls
An o3-written voice experiment on youthful aggression and older-man judgment.
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July 1, 2025
Bravado vs. Wisdom: A Tale of Two Generations
A short contrast between youthful bravado and older strategic patience.
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July 1, 2025
Youthful Fire, Seasoned Wisdom
A Codex-written voice experiment on balancing youthful drive with older restraint.
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July 1, 2025
Of Youthful Exuberance and Aged Wisdom
A Gemini-written voice experiment on youth, wisdom, and maturation.
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July 1, 2025
Between Boldness and Wisdom
A reflection on youthful aggression, older restraint, and the tension between energy and judgment.