A DuckDB file with no data in it is a catalog you can email. Here's where we'd use it
DuckDB can ship a few hundred KB of view definitions over a Delta Lake. Where we'd use it on client work, and the Unity Catalog line we would not cross.
Category
Field Notes
13 posts
Embedded analytics on Databricks, part 2
Five datasets per board meant five copies of the same query on every filter click. The rule we use now, and the three places it breaks.
Starting our SOC 2 journey: what we found before the audit
Customers asking for a SOC 2 report? Preparing for SOC 2 Type II, we found the controls were already running and proving them was the work.
Embedded analytics on Databricks, part 1
One ticket, one platform, and the cheapest first step. Moving a B2B product's client reporting onto Databricks, starting with Lakehouse Federation.
Governance You Can Actually Ship
AI governance fails when it lives in documents instead of infrastructure. Compliance comes from systems that enforce the rules while the model is running.
The Agent That Deleted Production
Enterprise software fails when IT mandates tools people do not want. Adoption comes from pull, and the same rule now applies to agents.
The Most Expensive Software Nobody Uses
Companies spend millions on enterprise AI that employees barely touch while shadow AI spreads. The problem is the tools, not the people ignoring them.
The Forward-Deployed Playbook
AI changed build versus buy. Now it is changing delivery. Small teams of senior engineers embedded in your operations, shipping in weeks rather than months.
What If Agile Was the Detour?
Agile answered expensive execution, not planning. As AI collapses build time, deep upfront specification plus fast execution ships in weeks.
Agentic Systems Without the Chaos: Building AI That Stays on the Rails
The engineering patterns that keep an autonomous system reliable in production. Guardrails, observability, circuit breakers, and where each one belongs.
The Build vs. Buy Decision for Enterprise AI (When Off-the-Shelf Fails You)
Faster models and larger context windows make a custom AI build viable in weeks, and data sovereignty exposes vendor limits. When to buy, build, or do both.
How to reach a new market without rebuilding your core platform
When onboarding smaller customers pulls engineers off the roadmap, build a self-serve way in and leave the core platform alone. How to find where the cost sits.
What Teams Get Wrong About Outages and Operational Risk
Cloudflare, AWS and Azure all went down in late 2025. What their postmortems show, and the restore drills that decide how long your own outage lasts.