Blog

Two APIs reported something missing when both meant not finished yet. An interface that can only say present or absent will say absent about something mid-creation.

In most software, deadlines are negotiable artefacts of planning. In a regulated market, some dates are external, fixed, and indifferent to your velocity.

You can build immaculate provenance internally and still be defeated by a supplier who typed an identifier two different ways.

Most compliance software solves for the person who set it up. That person is statistically absent when it matters.

The most requested feature in a compliance product is the single green checkmark. It is also the one I am most confident should never exist.

We built a tool that accepts documents from strangers. The most useful architectural decision was keeping none of them.

I modelled "effective date" and "enforceable" as one field. The system had no way to say "we do not know yet", so it asserted certainty it did not have.

Storing evidence and proving provenance are different engineering problems. One is a bucket. The other is an identity graph with a join you have to defend.

I quit Google to build compliant hemp delivery in Texas. After 12+ years in tech—building ML systems at Google, co-founding an AI voice assistant startup, and shipping products used by millions—I chos...

Shipped 5 production apps in 10 months solo by optimizing speed over elegance, familiarity over novelty, and leverage over control. Solo works, briefly.