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.

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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.

Portrait of Bill Gates speaking at the Munich Security Conference 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.

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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.

Large curved screen displays "chatgpt atlas" logo 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.

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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.

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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.

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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]: 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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.