Notes

Browse by topic

Three topic hubs; each one defines the area, offers a start path, and lists the notes.

Start here (reading paths)

Three short reading paths, one per topic.

Performance

1. TTFB and origin latencyUnderstand request phases and what “first byte” really contains.
2. Queueing basics and latency budgetsWhy tail latency explodes and how to set budgets that survive load.
3. Performance regressions checklistA workflow to confirm, isolate, and mitigate regressions.

Formal methods

1. Specs, invariants, and contractsWrite constraints you can review, test, and monitor.
2. Model checking primerExplore behaviour spaces and interpret counterexamples.
3. Session types and protocolsMake interaction structure explicit and checkable.

Distributed systems

1. Time, clocks, and orderingDefine “before” without relying on a single clock.
2. Failure modes, retries, idempotencyDesign operations so retry behaviour is safe and predictable.
3. Observability for distributed systemsDebug with evidence across service boundaries.

Latest notes

Six recent notes across all topics.

• Autonomous Operations Maturity Model: Steps Toward Fully Autonomous SystemsA practical maturity model for moving from manual operations to autonomous systems, covering the observability, testing, and governance requirements at each level. distributed
• Agentic AI vs. Human Supervision: Designing Systems Where Humans Set BoundariesHow to design AI agent systems with meaningful human oversight: boundary-setting patterns, escalation protocols, and the operational cost of supervision at scale. distributed
• Multi-Cloud Strategies and Regulatory Pressures: Architecting for Availability and ComplianceHow regulatory requirements and availability goals interact when distributing workloads across cloud providers, and what architectural patterns reduce risk without excessive complexity. distributed
• Designing AI Factories: Building Intelligent, Governed Pipelines Inside Your EnterpriseAn architecture-level view of enterprise AI factories: how to build governed, observable pipelines that move models from experimentation to production reliably. distributed
• Resilience as the New Benchmark: Designing Fault-Tolerant Systems in 2026Why resilience has overtaken raw throughput as the primary design constraint for production systems, and how to evaluate fault tolerance at the architecture level. distributed
• Agentic AI and System Complexity: Ensuring Observability and Governance for Autonomous AgentsHow autonomous AI agents introduce new failure modes into distributed systems, and what observability and governance infrastructure is needed to operate them safely. distributed
• Observability for distributed systemsHow traces and correlation IDs turn incidents into evidence. distributed
• Performance regressions checklistA repeatable workflow for confirming and localising regressions. performance
• Specs, invariants, and contractsWhat to write down so behaviour stays reviewable. formal
• Failure modes, retries, and idempotencyWhy retries create duplicates and how to make outcomes safe. distributed
• Cache hierarchy: edge to originReason about caches as a system, not a single knob. performance
• Behavioural equivalence in plain EnglishWhat “same behaviour” means depends on your observations. formal

How notes are written

• Quick summaryA short statement of what the note covers and why it matters.
• Key ideasDefinitions and mini examples to build working intuition.
• Common pitfallsThe mistakes that recur in practice (measurement, assumptions, and semantics).
• Related notesInternal links that keep the knowledge base navigable and crawlable.