Insights
Field notes from the work — operator-level writing on the systems, decisions, and engineering trade-offs behind our ventures.
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The Token Cost of Shorthand Is Real. Almost Nobody Puts It in the Right Place.
ptalversusplease take another look: the viral posts measure the wrong tokens, name a mechanism that doesn't exist, and still trip over a real effect. -
Stop Re-Litigating the Same Lessons: Specialist Memory for AI Agents (Part 1)
Two failed designs — coordinator-injected context and a monolithic runbook — and the per-specialist memory directory that finally pays for itself the second time you hit a wall. Part 1 of two.
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The NULL Trap in Postgres Idempotency Locks
A Postgres
UNIQUEconstraint with a nullable key column silently lets duplicate idempotency rows through, becauseNULLis never equal toNULL. The fix is an empty-string sentinel. -
Your Serverless Quota Check Has a Race Condition. Postgres Already Has the Fix.
Two concurrent requests, one quota, and the bug that lets a paying user end up at 101 of 100. The fix is one line of Postgres — no Redis, no distributed locks, no retry storms.
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From Chaotic Kittens to a Coordinated Squad: How We Cut Our AI Agent Squad in Half
Six specialist agents became three, output quality went up, and compute costs went down. The lessons on context bloat, role overlap, and when to stop adding voices to the manager's head.