The Engineering Notebook — 390 posts
Notes on building with AI, agents & the modern stack.
Deep dives on AI/ML, RAG systems, agent engineering, and senior-engineer architecture decisions — a new post every week.
● Latest How to Ship OpenAI Agents API Guardrails in 1 Day [2026]
Production tool-use fails on governance, not prompts. Here’s a practical setup for OpenAI Agents API guardrails: allowlists, layered rate limits, and audit logs you can actually use in incidents.
Recent posts
390 posts
Developer Tools Bun lockfile bun.lockb format: Threat model + CI checks [2026]
bun.lockb made Bun installs fast, but it also changed how you audit dependency drift. Here’s what’s inside, what integrity it gives you, and how to enforce it in CI.
Cybersecurity Why AI Voice Detectors Fail [2026]: Codecs, Watermarks, Traps
“AI voice detector” scores swing wildly because the audio channel is the adversary. Here’s how codecs, noise suppression, and bad metrics break detection in the 2026 real world.
Developer Tools How to Secure MCP Servers: Auth + AuthZ [2026 Tutorial]
A gateway-grade blueprint for MCP servers: authenticated discovery, PKCE/OAuth done right, tool-scoped permissions, audit logs, rate limits, and secret handling—with runnable Node/Express code.
Developer Tools Rust Reproducible Builds + SBOM + Signed Artifacts [2026]
A 2026-ready Rust release pipeline: pin toolchains, make builds reproducible, gate deps with cargo-vet, generate SBOM + SLSA provenance, and sign everything with keyless cosign.
![markdown documentation code editor laptop screen — illustration for article on Agent Readable Documentation Toolchain [2026]:](https://img.kunalganglani.com/images/vzekdneq/production/5d5a338107b4aa20b1df7ae6932d19901d946eba-1200x675.webp?auto=format&fit=max&q=75&w=600)
Developer Tools Agent Readable Documentation Toolchain [2026]: My Stack
A docs-as-code pipeline that stays great for humans, useful for your trusted AI agents, and aggressively unhelpful to random scrapers. Practical, not theoretical.
Technology 12 Possible Endings for AI: Fact-Checking the “MIT” Meme [2026]
The viral “MIT Explains the 12 Possible Endings for AI” claim isn’t an MIT publication. Here’s a grounded 12-scenario taxonomy, signals to watch, and how to steer outcomes.
Developer Tools How to Design Webhook Retries, Ordering, Idempotency [2026]
A practical 10M events/day webhook delivery architecture: partition keys, retry storm control, per-tenant isolation, idempotency storage, replay UX, and reliability SLOs.
Technology 7 Critical AI Choices Bill Gates Is Warning About [2026]
Bill Gates’ warning isn’t vague doom. It’s a shortlist of decisions about guardrails, education, privacy, and misinformation that will either compound benefits or lock in harms.
Technology 5 Open Source Tools That Replaced My $20/mo AI Stack [2026]
I replaced a $20/month pile of AI subscriptions with a self-hosted stack: Ollama for local models, LiteLLM for routing, Whisper for meeting notes, Langfuse for evals, and OpenHands for agentic coding.
Technology 2026 Reality Check: Is “GPT-6 Astra” Actually AGI?
“GPT-6 Astra” is a rumor-shaped phrase that’s already leaking into markets. Here’s what would actually count as AGI, and how to verify any OpenAI claim fast.
AI and Machine Learning LLM Knowledge Base Architecture Guide [2026]: Wiki vs Notes vs RAG
A practical, vendor-neutral decision guide for wiki-style, notes-first, and RAG-first knowledge bases. Storage formats, chunking, ACL patterns, hybrid search, and a phased migration plan for agent-ready docs.
Developer Tools How to Run Anubis WASM Bot Filter as a Reverse Proxy [2026]
Install Anubis (WASM) in front of your app, forward real client IPs correctly, tune challenges to avoid blocking humans, and ship with a rollback plan.
Developer Tools How to Build a Rust Version Bump Tool [2026 Tutorial]
Build a CI-safe Rust release toolchain: semver bump rules, workspace updates, changelog generation, annotated/signed git tags, and reproducible benchmarks.
![system logs terminal laptop screen code — illustration for article on LLM Data Leakage Playbook [2026]:](https://img.kunalganglani.com/images/vzekdneq/production/6d5e5f730983ecdcec86a90f783fd63f70b2bd9b-1200x675.webp?auto=format&fit=max&q=75&w=600)
Cybersecurity LLM Data Leakage Playbook [2026]: Logging, Retention, Redaction
A practitioner playbook for preventing data leakage in LLM apps by hardening logging, retention, and redaction across the entire prompt→tools→model→observability path, with audit-ready evidence you can hand to compliance.
Developer Tools Prevent API Key Leaks in Shell History (bash/zsh/fish) [2026]
A practical terminal hardening guide to prevent API key leaks in shell history, env vars, and dotfiles. Includes bash/zsh/fish configs, direnv/mise patterns, secret scanning, and a leak response runbook.
Technology GPT-6 vs GPT-5.6 [2026]: What’s Real vs Rumor
A reality-check on GPT-6 vs GPT-5.6: what’s confirmed, what’s unverified, and how to evaluate capability, cost, latency, and safety before you “upgrade.”
Developer Tools How to Migrate to jj Version Control (Git-Compatible) [2026]
A migration-first tutorial for Git teams: clone/init, learn jj’s working-copy model, map Git branches to bookmarks, ship stacked PRs, and keep CI unchanged.
Technology How to Set Up a Local AI Hub for Home Automation Privacy [2026]
A practical workflow to keep a “local AI hub” actually local: map cloud dependencies, segment your IoT LAN, then prove (via DNS, SNI, and firewall logs) what’s phoning home.
Technology Xbox Cloud Gaming Pay‑As‑You‑Go Latency: Fix Input Lag Fast [2026]
If Xbox Cloud Gaming goes pay‑as‑you‑go, latency becomes a tax. Here’s the measurement-first workflow and home network settings that actually cut input lag.
Developer Tools Polars 2.0 Upgrade Guide [2026]: Streaming Default + CI Bench
Polars 2.0 flips LazyFrame execution to the streaming engine by default. Here’s a migration checklist, row-order fixes, and a copy/paste regression harness you can run in CI.