New Empire
Writing

Notes on building real software

Practical essays on shipping production AI, leading engineering teams, and getting things into customers' hands faster.

May 12, 2026 · 6 min read

Shipping trustworthy AI: why RAG beats a bare LLM in production

A practical look at why retrieval-augmented generation is the difference between an AI demo and an AI product your customers can rely on.

AI/MLRAGProduction

April 3, 2026 · 5 min read

How I cut development cycles by 40% without cutting corners

Faster delivery rarely comes from working harder. Here are the systems-level changes that made shipping routine instead of risky.

Engineering LeadershipDeliveryDevOps