The Engineering Notebook — page 7 of 38
Notes on building with AI, agents & the modern stack.
Deep dives on AI/ML, RAG systems, agent engineering, and senior-engineer architecture decisions.
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.
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.