working theory.theory.

Perspectives from engineers on software engineering, AI, infrastructure, security, and the problems we’re working through.

The latest issue

Sep 28, 2026
The multi-armed bandit approach to securing EC2 instances
When boxes are MIA, the multi-armed bandit saves the day.
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Previous issues

Aug 19, 2026
How I delegate the work, not my judgment
A diff tells you what changed, not why. How to hand agents the work while keeping the intuition to challenge what they produce.
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Jul 29, 2026
GitHub is the wrong shape for this new world
The branch-and-pull-request model was built for humans typing slowly. That's not how code gets written anymore.
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Jul 20, 2026
Improving system safety with Temporal Logic of Actions (TLA+)
Agents write the TLA+ spec from your code. On the rebuilt Registry GC it caught a live-data-deleting race.
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Jul 13, 2026
Why your team processes suck
A team process without a principle underneath it is a real problem. Protect the "why" as you scale.
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Jun 30, 2026
Staying in control of your codebase in the AI era
AI writes code faster than you can review it, but you're on call when it breaks. A Go workflow to stay in control.
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Jun 11, 2026
Paranoia is baseline now: Security in the AI era
AI made finding obscure Linux bugs fast and cheap. Kernel hardening sorted by what it costs you.
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Mar 31, 2026
What we need from CI for agentic engineering
Agents push code faster than CI can run. What CI has to become when nobody's at the keyboard.
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Feb 18, 2026
The differences between QEMU microvm and Cloud Hypervisor
Choosing a microVM for CI: API, GPU passthrough, snapshotting, live migration, and hotplug, side by side.
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Feb 12, 2026
My intuition doesn't work anymore
An LLM refactored a 1500-line mess into clean code. Months later, only agents worked in it.
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Feb 2, 2026
The bottleneck has shifted from writing code to integrating it
Writing code stopped being the slow part. Now it's integration, review, and CI, and workflows haven't caught up.
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