Field notes

Cache any function in one line, and measure whether it helped
One attribute caches any function by a hash of its inputs, and the business owns the staleness dial
.NET, PostSharp, Redis, HybridCache, Grafana
Field note · Sep 2026

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Canary deploys on a Lambda alias: the rollback I allow
Traffic shifts to the new version and back on bad health, while the repository only moves forward
AWS Lambda, AWS CodeDeploy, Amazon CloudWatch, AWS SAM
Field note · Sep 2026

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Decomposing a Figma design for an AI coding assistant
A screenshot per component, then one workflow at a time, because whole pages didn't work
Figma, Cursor, React, Node.js
Field note · Sep 2026

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The in-app agent: page state in, an action list out
Page state in, a JSON action list out, executed by the client and held by two allow-lists
React, Node.js, Claude API (Anthropic SDK), JSON Schema
Field note · Sep 2026

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Pre-rendering for crawlers: the governor and the URL set
A worker ceiling and a Redis set that refuses to render the same URL twice
AWS Lambda, Amazon SQS, Amazon ElastiCache, Amazon S3, Amazon CloudFront, Headless Chromium
Field note · Sep 2026

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Migrations that run at startup, under a lock
Forward-only migrations that run inside the service on boot, under a lock
Node.js, SQLite, PostgreSQL, Amazon ECS
Field note · Sep 2026

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Trace every function with one attribute
A .NET aspect that timed every function and flushed once per request, which found a slow index in an hour
.NET, PostSharp, OpenTelemetry, Graphite, Grafana, Splunk, Redis
Field note · Sep 2026

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Casting models across an agent pipeline
Model and effort picked by pipeline stage, with the reviewer on a different vendor by design
Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Grok, Qwen
Field note · Aug 2026

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CDK stacks across regions: the shape that held
SSM Parameter Store carries a certificate ARN across regions where a stack export cannot
AWS CDK, AWS CloudFormation, Amazon CloudFront, AWS Certificate Manager, AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store
Field note · Aug 2026

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One state file or many: how I split Terraform state
Terraform state split by change velocity, not only by environment
Terraform, Amazon S3, Amazon DynamoDB, AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store
Field note · Aug 2026

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Terraform or CDK: how I decide
A mandate decided it, and CDK's ergonomics come with CloudFormation's cost
Terraform, AWS CDK, AWS CloudFormation
Field note · Aug 2026

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Terraform state corruption: what I did before the retry
The ladder climbed before nuke-and-reimport, in dev and never in prod
Terraform, Amazon S3, AWS Lambda, Amazon VPC
Field note · Aug 2026

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