anthony taguest·sydney --:--
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Short notes I keep coming back to — mostly what I've learned building.
graceful degradation is an invariant, not a vibeA fallback only counts if the try starts at the first fallible line.Jul 4, 2026the happy path hides the hardest inputA Japanese-input app shipped an Enter-to-send that broke for anyone typing Japanese.Jul 4, 2026save the work, then mark it doneA blip on a cosmetic stats call threw away 38 paid AI judgments — a side-effect ordering bug.Jun 25, 2026keep the model in its laneLet the model do the fuzzy part; compute everything that can be computed.Jun 21, 2026the cheapest model call is the one you deleteWhen you’ve built a pile of machinery to make a model behave, that’s the signal it shouldn’t be there.Jun 21, 2026a prompt is a vote, not a checklistWhy a soft “…unless…” clause loses to the paragraph around it.Jun 15, 2026evals turn a demo into a productA golden set, an LLM judge, and trusting the delta — not the score.Jun 12, 2026deterministic state machines pay for themselvesMake the core pure and the features you haven’t thought of get easier.Jun 11, 2026casual is the hardest registerThe impressive case is the messy, unwritten one — so build for it.Jun 10, 2026refusing an injection is also a leakFor a tool that transforms untrusted text, the safe-looking fix creates a second leak.Jun 9, 2026validate your environment at the edgeFail loud and early on bad config — but be precise about which edge.Jun 8, 2026a library relocates the bugReaching for a battle-tested dependency doesn’t delete your bugs — it moves them all to how you call it.May 29, 2026
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