Notes
Because I looked it up
Working notes on security, systems, and the practice of engineering with AI.
What made a component platform survive five host frameworks
platform-engineering · architecture · web
Borealis ran across Next.js, Svelte, React, Vue, and .NET. The portability came from versioning the props-and-events contract, not from the technology.
Better Stack engineering interview: every question asked
interviews · security · databases
Every question from a 2026 Better Stack engineering interview: four stages, a web-security and SQL screen, and where it differed from the briefing.
CORS: what it is, why it exists, and how it works
web · security · http
Cross-Origin Resource Sharing explained: same-origin policy, preflight requests, response headers, credentials, and the configuration mistakes that bite.
Database indexing and query diagnosis
databases · backend · performance
How B-tree, hash, composite, covering, and partial indexes differ, why column order decides whether an index is used, and how to diagnose a high P95.
Staff software engineer interview question bank
interviews · system-design · backend
A question-only study guide for staff-level interviews: API design, distributed consistency, platform engineering, security, databases, and observability.
Process vs. thread, and where Node fits
systems · node · concurrency
Why isolation and shared memory are different trade-offs, and how Node's single-threaded event loop and worker_threads actually relate to that choice.
Notes on agentic engineering: CLAUDE.md and agentic loops
ai · engineering-practice
A synthesis of Better Stack's published playbook for shipping production code with an AI agent, restructured as reference notes.
SQL injection, XSS, CSRF, and mass assignment, by hand
security · web
SQL injection, XSS, CSRF, and mass assignment, each reconstructed without a framework, because the mechanism is the part worth being able to rebuild.
Posted as topics come up in real work, not on a schedule.