System Design

  • When an AI Agent Has No Contract: What OpenClaw Proves About Tier-0 Risk

    In the last post, I defined six risks that exist before your first prompt. They were structural by design. Not sensational. Not theoretical. Not hypothetical. They describe what happens when capability is granted before constraints are defined. Then OpenClaw happened. And every one of those risks surfaced — publicly, visibly, and all at once. This…

  • Why AI Responses Fail in Production: 6 Risks You Must Design For

    It always starts the same way. Someone shares a screenshot in the incident channel. A sentence that went to a customer. A number that didn’t exist. A citation to a paper that was never written. And then the question: “How did this get out?” In 2025, Deloitte submitted a government report containing fabricated academic citations,…

  • Monolith vs. MSA? Stop Asking “Which,” Start Asking “Why.”

    Architect’s Handbook for MSA This article is a standalone deep dive on how to properly decompose a monolith and is a chapter in our comprehensive series. You don’t need any prior context to get the full value from this post. To explore all related topics, please visit the full series index. -> Explore the Full…

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