Engineering Dispatches

Engineering

Technical deep dives, system narratives, and hard-won lessons from building with AI. Written in the spirit of showing what we actually built, what actually worked, and what actually failed.

Architectural blueprint engulfed in regenerative flames — the phoenix metaphor for disposable code

Featured MAR 24, 2026 Deep Dive 18 Min Read

Phoenix Architecture: Disposable Code, Durable Systems, and the End of Software as We Know It

Chad Fowler argues that the fundamental unit of intellectual property in a software system is not the code, but the intent that produced it. The code is a build artifact — a compiler output that should be regenerated as casually as we recompile a binary.

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Code on a dark screen — the verification problem

MAR 24, 2026 Deep Dive 25 Min Read

The Evil Genie Problem: Why Verification Is the Real AI Bottleneck

Will Wilson argues that making software deterministic is the single highest-leverage intervention available — and that AI code generation has made this intervention urgent rather than merely important.

DNA helix transforming into security shield

MAR 22, 2026 Deep Dive 20 Min Read

Breeding Better Attackers: Evolving Security Chaos Experiments with AI

We spent $0.93 to evolve 30 generations of AI-generated security experiments against a deliberately vulnerable cloud environment. Three independent lineages converged on the same six-step attack chain. The IAM boundary held.