Blog
Notes, thoughts, and deep dives on AI, systems architecture, and software engineering — from over a decade building products.
Showing 1–10 of 37 posts
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How to Make an MVP in the AI Era
What an MVP actually needs to do now that AI makes building nearly free. The traps of AI-era MVPs, proven industry examples like Dropbox, Groupon, Zappos and Midjourney, and why the constraint moved from writing code to testing assumptions with real customers.
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10 Event-Driven Architecture Questions That Separate Architects from Framework Users
Ten questions that separate someone who knows an event-driven framework from someone who understands distributed systems. Idempotency, ordering, consistency, schema evolution, sagas, observability, and knowing when NOT to use events.
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Beyond Email: Dual-Channel SMS Catching, 14 MCP Tools, and Email Analysis in Pine Mail
Pine Mail grows from a tiny SMTP catcher into a dual-channel auth testing hub: SMS catching with Twilio webhooks, 14 MCP tools for AI agents, and Litmus-style email analysis.
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Introducing Pine Mail: A Tiny SMTP Mail Catcher for Developers and AI Agents
Why I built Pine Mail: a single-binary SMTP mail catcher in Rust with a REST API and MCP server for automated testing and AI agents.
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Make the Hard Decision Before the Product Fails
Most products don't die suddenly - they die from delayed decisions. A practical guide to failure signals, leading indicators, premortems, and perish/pivot/persevere rules founders should set before launch.
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AI Didn't Cause Every Layoff. Management Did.
A human take on the AI layoff era: how much of the job loss is genuinely automation, and how much is management using AI as the most convenient excuse for decisions that were already coming.
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Setting Up a Legacy Rails 4.2.6 Project with Docker in 2024
How to set up and run a legacy Rails 4.2.6 project in 2024 using Docker to isolate outdated dependencies.
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I don't use Tea bags for my pot of Tea
Why loose-leaf tea beats tea bags: better quality leaves, no microplastics, and a more sustainable cup of tea.
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How I do water fasting
Water fasting is a type of fasting where you only consume water for a period of time. This can be done for a variety of reasons, including weight loss, spiritual reasons, or to improve overall health.
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Why I am practising 24-hour water fasting 2 days a week
Why Yoosuf Mohamed practises 24-hour water fasting two days a week, and the effects he's noticed.