Field Note
Loop Engineering Needs a Platform
Loop engineering pays off when a platform's contracts, tests, and policy checks decide whether an agent's loop is actually done.
Topic
AI
AI systems, engineering judgment, and the organisational choices behind useful automation.
Field Note
The Rise of the Agent-Native Developer Platform
For thirty years we built developer platforms for developers. The next ones are built for the agents developers delegate to.
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
The Human in the loop is not a strategy
Human oversight in AI systems must be designed as a control capability, not treated as a reassuring box at the end of a workflow.
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
Modern data platforms are becoming operating systems for decisions, automation, governance, and the flow of organizational work.
Field Note
AI development & Engineering clarity
AI-assisted development rewards engineering clarity because faster execution amplifies the quality, ambiguity, and governance of the system around it.
Field Note
Alfred does its homework before writing a line of code
Alfred shows why agentic engineering starts before code: tickets need enough context, constraints, and evidence for machines to help safely.
Field Note
I Let an AI Agent Read My Jira Tickets Before Reviewing PRs
AI-assisted PR review only works when agents can bring issue context, implementation evidence, and review intent into the same engineering surface.