Field Note
Golden Paths for Machines
A golden path built for humans is a recommendation. A golden path built for a machine has to be an interface.
Field Notes
Essays and commentary from the edge of the map.
Writing on architecture, AI, and transformation, and the judgment required when systems stop behaving as expected.
Latest Field Notes
Field Note
Internal Platforms need product managers, not priests
A platform team that rules by doctrine gets compliance. A platform team that runs like a product gets adoption. Only one of those is worth anything.
Field Note
The Platform Team as an Economic Function
A platform team is not a cost centre. It changes the marginal cost of safe change, and that is an economic argument, not a tooling one.
Field Note
Tiny teams, heavy systems
AI will make some teams smaller. It will not make the work lighter.
Field Note
The death of vibe coding will be boring
The next phase of AI-assisted engineering will not be more magical. It will be more explicit.
Field Note
Agentic engineering
Agentic engineering is not the art of asking AI to do more. It is the discipline of making work explicit enough that machines can safely help with it.
Field Note
How to evaluate platform engineering value
The value of a platform is not the tooling. It is the organisational friction it makes unnecessary. Platform engineering is easy to justify badly. A team builds an
Field Note
The Human in the loop is not a strategy
"Human oversight" is doing a lot of work in AI architecture diagrams. Too much, I think. It usually shows up as a reassuring little box near
Field Note
When the consumer is a machine
Event contracts used to be guidance. With agents on the other end, they're the thing the system actually runs on.
Field Note
Batch vs Streaming is the Wrong Data Architecture Question
The real architectural decision isn't how fast you process data. It's what you choose to treat as a fact, and whether the machines around it can reason about those facts without asking permission.
Field Note
Why the modern Data Platform is becoming an Operating System
Why it is no longer just infrastructure For a long time, the data platform was treated as a supporting layer. A place where data was collected, transformed, stored,
Field Note
AI development & Engineering clarity
A few years ago, most engineering organizations were constrained by the same thing: writing code was expensive. Not just in budget terms. Expensive in attention. In coordination. In
Field Note
Alfred does its homework before writing a line of code
There’s a particular kind of frustration engineers know well: you pick up a Jira ticket and the description reads something like “Fix the thing from the meeting.” No context. No requirements/details.
Field Note
Technical Value Assurance: The Missing Function in Enterprise Engineering
Why the gap between delivery and value is rarely a technical problem, and what it actually takes to close it.
Field Note
I Let an AI Agent Read My Jira Tickets Before Reviewing PRs
How GitHub Agentic Workflows + MCP turned my pull request reviews from context-switching nightmares into fully-loaded briefings
Field Note
Custom domain handles on Bluesky (with Terraform!)
Bluesky is a new social network, decentralised and allowing you to own your custom handle, let's experiment with this feature.