AI Engineer. Writing about practical AI implementation, engineering craft, and building systems that work.https://timariyeh.com/https://timariyeh.com/a-channel-is-not-an-assignment/https://timariyeh.com/a-channel-is-not-an-assignment/Work assignment is a solved problem, and chat is the tool we know fails at it. Claude Tag hands that job to an agent, which only makes the failure worse.Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://timariyeh.com/a-sandbox-for-user-code/https://timariyeh.com/a-sandbox-for-user-code/The execution sandbox and the policy that gates it are the heart of a user-code platform. You compose storage and scheduling from cloud primitives.Sat, 27 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://timariyeh.com/agents-are-about-correction/https://timariyeh.com/agents-are-about-correction/AI with tools can act. What makes an agent different is what happens when the action fails.Fri, 17 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://timariyeh.com/carry-your-own-clock/https://timariyeh.com/carry-your-own-clock/The control group quit and the benchmarks broke. There is no shared instrument for what AI does to engineering work, so carry your own.Sat, 25 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://timariyeh.com/children-of-the-magenta-line/https://timariyeh.com/children-of-the-magenta-line/The cockpit ran this experiment first: the work automation spares you is where your judgment was grown. Knowledge work is about to get the same bill.Sun, 05 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://timariyeh.com/credential-broker-for-user-code/https://timariyeh.com/credential-broker-for-user-code/Apps and Connectors over a credential broker that mints short-lived, per-user tokens, so user code runs as the accessing user and never as a service account.Thu, 25 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://timariyeh.com/distraction-degrades-the-model/https://timariyeh.com/distraction-degrades-the-model/Packing competing objectives into one prompt costs quality on both. The intuition for when to split is a real skill.Wed, 22 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://timariyeh.com/files-without-s3-cron-without-eventbridge/https://timariyeh.com/files-without-s3-cron-without-eventbridge/Storage, scheduling, and secrets are not services you provision per tenant. You compose them from cloud primitives, in userspace, on either cloud.Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://timariyeh.com/giving-data-to-ai/https://timariyeh.com/giving-data-to-ai/The mental model is wrong. You don't pour your database into a prompt. You equip the model to go look, and that's the project every business is actually working on.Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://timariyeh.com/inference-cost-is-architecture/https://timariyeh.com/inference-cost-is-architecture/AI systems get expensive when the model owns every branch. Deterministic orchestration keeps reasoning bounded, testable, and worth its token bill.Sat, 08 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://timariyeh.com/intro-to-claude-context/https://timariyeh.com/intro-to-claude-context/Claude starts every conversation as a blank slate. Context tiers let you fix that once instead of fixing it every time you open a chat.Fri, 08 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://timariyeh.com/it-worked-once/https://timariyeh.com/it-worked-once/A demo proves a thing is possible. It says nothing about how often it works, and production runs entirely on how often. Possibility is not reliability.Sat, 11 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://timariyeh.com/mcp-apps/https://timariyeh.com/mcp-apps/MCP Apps let servers render interactive UI directly in conversations. Use one when people need to manipulate state that text handles badly.Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://timariyeh.com/mcp-is-the-oauth-layer/https://timariyeh.com/mcp-is-the-oauth-layer/The anti-MCP take is a single-user take. When your agent serves multiple users accessing their data on remote services, you need a protocol. MCP is the one.Fri, 03 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://timariyeh.com/micromanaging-the-model/https://timariyeh.com/micromanaging-the-model/Modern LLMs are capable enough that step-by-step instructions constrain them. A destination outperforms a procedure. Declarative beats imperative.Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://timariyeh.com/production-output-tool-calls/https://timariyeh.com/production-output-tool-calls/When you pipe LLM chat responses into production systems, you're using a scratch channel as a delivery mechanism. Tool calls separate reasoning from output and fix the reliability problems you didn't know you had.Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://timariyeh.com/prompted-but-not-read/https://timariyeh.com/prompted-but-not-read/We used to write 'Dictated but not read' at the bottom of letters when a secretary did the typing. The parallel to what we're all doing now is too perfect to ignore.Mon, 04 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://timariyeh.com/responsible-charge/https://timariyeh.com/responsible-charge/Every field that solved delegated work solved it with a name on a line and a license that can be taken. AI governance is a hunt for a way to skip that step.Sat, 18 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://timariyeh.com/rules-are-not-controls/https://timariyeh.com/rules-are-not-controls/A rules file moves the odds. It does not bind anything. HANDBOOK.md measures the gap between policy and compliance.Sat, 01 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://timariyeh.com/software-has-no-value/https://timariyeh.com/software-has-no-value/AI makes software cheaper to produce. The value was always in the problem it solved, and the old scarcity premium is shrinking.Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://timariyeh.com/the-english-trap/https://timariyeh.com/the-english-trap/You're not having a conversation with an LLM. You're writing a spec for a system that will exploit every ambiguity you leave on the table. The sooner you treat it that way, the sooner your results stop being wildly inconsistent.Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://timariyeh.com/the-knowledge-rancher/https://timariyeh.com/the-knowledge-rancher/When generation becomes free, the job stops being production and turns into managing a herd you didn't have to raise. What's left is judgment and timing, and that drains you in a way typing never did.Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://timariyeh.com/toxic-ai-mentality/https://timariyeh.com/toxic-ai-mentality/A frame people fall into where AI failure becomes a trophy. The screenshot is queued before the prompt is sent. Meanwhile, everyone around them is shipping.Sat, 02 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://timariyeh.com/user-code-acts-as-the-user/https://timariyeh.com/user-code-acts-as-the-user/SSO gets the user in, but the real work is carrying that identity into the sandbox: code that acts as the user, scoped sessions, and per-user secrets.Fri, 26 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://timariyeh.com/users-run-ai-generated-code/https://timariyeh.com/users-run-ai-generated-code/Users get the most leverage when the model writes code, and that code runs somewhere. Your only real choice is whose infrastructure: yours or someone else's.Mon, 29 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://timariyeh.com/using-ai-is-management/https://timariyeh.com/using-ai-is-management/People who've managed teams tend to get more out of AI faster. The skills transfer directly: delegate clearly, define success, don't blame the team member for your assignment.Wed, 22 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://timariyeh.com/we-automate-what-we-can-verify/https://timariyeh.com/we-automate-what-we-can-verify/Code was the first big win for AI agents because code is cheap to check. The same rule decides which business processes compress next, and which stay stuck.Sat, 02 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://timariyeh.com/where-user-code-runs/https://timariyeh.com/where-user-code-runs/MicroVMs or V8 isolates? The boundary you pick for untrusted user code sets your blast radius, your latency, and your cost. A field guide to both.Sun, 28 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://timariyeh.com/why-emphasis-works/https://timariyeh.com/why-emphasis-works/Bold text and CAPS in prompts aren't voodoo. They work because of how attention literally functions in transformers. Understanding the mechanism makes you a better prompt engineer.Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://timariyeh.com/writing-a-good-mcp-server/https://timariyeh.com/writing-a-good-mcp-server/Most MCP servers expose too many tools with bad names and useless errors. Practical lessons from building servers that models actually use well.Tue, 12 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT