Writing

Notes & case studies

Short notes on what shipped, what failed, and how it was measured — AI agents, security, and systems.

7 posts · newest first

2026-10-1410 min

Guardrails Belong on the Critical Path

How I built a 3-tier safety interceptor for an AI agent framework — one chokepoint between planning and execution, errors-as-data, default-deny approvals, and the honest limits of regex blocklists and LLM judges, audited line-by-line against the 0.3.4 code.

AI AgentsSafety & GuardrailsModusAIAgent Infrastructure+1
Read → /guardrails-belong-on-the-critical-path
2026-10-106 min

Burst-Proofing a SQLite Writer: Measuring Spill-to-Disk Overflow

What a 20,000-event burst taught me: one SQLite writer commits 7-9k ev/s while overflow producers crawl at 88 ev/s — with the data-loss paths left open.

AI AgentsObservabilitySQLitePerformance
Read → /burst-proofing-a-sqlite-writer-measuring-spill-to-disk-overflow
2026-09-286 min

TSE Queries Should Degrade Instead of Dying

How TSE's router merges SQLite hot and Parquet cold tiers with overlap windows, staying available when either tier fails.

GoSQLiteParquetQuery Engine+2
Read → /queries-should-degrade-instead-of-dying
2026-09-2510 min

Observability for Agents Should Cost Nothing

How I built local, asynchronous observability for an AI agent framework with a bounded queue, background writer, and SQLite—keeping tracing off the critical path.

AI AgentsPythonObservabilityAgent Infrastructure+2
Read → /observability-for-agents-should-cost-nothing
2026-08-175 min

Build Your First AI Agent in Ten Minutes

Install Modus, ask a model a question, give your agent memory, hand it a tool, and trace everything. A beginner path with runnable code.

AI AgentsPythonModusAITutorial+1
Read → /build-your-first-ai-agent-in-ten-minutes
2026-08-1110 min

Flush Should Never Make Ingest Wait

How TSE's drain-loop flusher, contiguous watermark, and idempotent writes survive SIGKILL mid-flush without blocking ingest.

GoDurabilityCrash RecoveryIdempotency+2
Read → /flush-should-never-make-ingest-wait
Showing 6 of 7 posts